Moscow mayor reports intercepting 1,600 drones during ‘unprecedented’ attack, accusing Ukraine of election interference.
Published On 20 Sep 2026
At least two people have been killed and a major refinery has been damaged as hundreds of drones targeted the Russian capital, Moscow, and its surrounding region on the final day of the country’s parliamentary elections.
Moscow’s Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Sunday that more than 1,600 drones had been intercepted and shot down, 450 of which were heading for Moscow.
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He also accused Ukraine of attempting to interfere with a tightly controlled three-day election that is set to tighten President Vladimir Putin’s 26-year grip on power.
“The unprecedented attack was clearly planned with the aim of disrupting the elections. The enemy did not succeed,” he said on Telegram.
Moscow regional Governor Andrey Vorobyov said on social media that a 44-year-old woman and an elderly man were killed in two separate locations.
A fire triggered by a drone crashing into a 21-storey building forced the evacuation of 400 people, Vorobyov said.
The strikes come as Kyiv has intensified its long-range drone campaign against Russia, particularly targeting energy infrastructure to cut off a vital source of Kremlin revenue used to fund its war effort, now in its fifth year.
“A facility on the territory of the Moscow Oil Refinery has been damaged,” Sobyanin added, saying that no casualties were reported so far and emergency services were on the scene.
The major refinery has already been hit by Ukrainian strikes in recent months.
The latest strike follows claims by US President Donald Trump on Monday that Ukraine and Russia had agreed not to target each other’s energy facilities.
It also comes as Russians vote in the country’s first parliamentary elections since Moscow sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022, igniting a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people. Moscow has also organised voting in parts of Ukraine that it has seized in the four-and-a-half-year war.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Air Force Command reported that Russia launched 138 drones of various types across the country overnight, according to the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.
It added that air defences managed to shoot down or neutralise 101 of them.