Moscow mayor stories intercepting 1,600 drones throughout ‘unprecedented’ assault, accusing Ukraine of election interference.
Printed On 20 Sep 2026
A minimum of two folks have been killed and a serious refinery has been broken as lots of of drones focused the Russian capital, Moscow, and its surrounding area on the ultimate day of the nation’s parliamentary elections.
Moscow’s Mayor Sergei Sobyanin mentioned on Sunday that greater than 1,600 drones had been intercepted and shot down, 450 of which have been heading for Moscow.
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He additionally accused Ukraine of trying to intervene with a tightly managed three-day election that’s set to tighten President Vladimir Putin’s 26-year grip on energy.
“The unprecedented assault was clearly deliberate with the purpose of disrupting the elections. The enemy didn’t succeed,” he mentioned on Telegram.
Moscow regional Governor Andrey Vorobyov mentioned on social media {that a} 44-year-old girl and an aged man have been killed in two separate areas.
A hearth triggered by a drone crashing right into a 21-storey constructing compelled the evacuation of 400 folks, Vorobyov mentioned.
The strikes come as Kyiv has intensified its long-range drone marketing campaign in opposition to Russia, significantly focusing on vitality infrastructure to chop off an important supply of Kremlin income used to fund its conflict effort, now in its fifth 12 months.
“A facility on the territory of the Moscow Oil Refinery has been broken,” Sobyanin added, saying that no casualties have been reported to date and emergency companies have been on the scene.
The main refinery has already been hit by Ukrainian strikes in latest months.
The most recent strike follows claims by US President Donald Trump on Monday that Ukraine and Russia had agreed to not goal one another’s vitality amenities.
It additionally comes as Russians vote within the nation’s first parliamentary elections since Moscow despatched troops into Ukraine in February 2022, igniting a conflict that has killed lots of of hundreds of individuals. Moscow has additionally organised voting in elements of Ukraine that it has seized within the four-and-a-half-year conflict.
In the meantime, Ukraine’s Air Pressure Command reported that Russia launched 138 drones of varied varieties throughout the nation in a single day, in response to the Interfax-Ukraine information company.
It added that air defences managed to shoot down or neutralise 101 of them.
