Day: September 20, 2026

Huge fires burned through Moscow overnight following one of the biggest Ukrainian drone attacks in the Russian capital, which left two people dead. 

Ukraine and Russia have continued attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure despite ​an announcement by US President Donald Trump on Monday that they had agreed ⁠to stop.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on his Telegram channel that the biggest ​Ukrainian drone attacks had been thwarted, with Russia downing more than 1,600 drones since ​Saturday, including 450 headed for Moscow. 

Several drones reached the premises of the Moscow oil refinery, and one hit an apartment, Sobyanin said.

The latest attack from Ukraine comes as Russia entered its third and final day of a parliamentary election that President Vladimir Putin has cast as a test of support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. 

‘The unprecedented attack ​was clearly planned with the aim of disrupting the elections,’ Sobyanin said. ‘The adversary ​failed to achieve this.’

A major warehouse in a logistics hub in the nearby town of Sofyino was also struck, killing a woman and injuring five others – including two children. 

Elsewhere in the Orekhovo-Zuevsky district, an elderly man was killed by a downed drone. 

Images showed how thick black smoke blanketed part of the city as it billowed from the site of the Moscow refinery.

The scale of any damage to the facility was not immediately known, while all four of Moscow’s main airports faced major disruption as the capital’s airspace was closed. 

Ukrainian strikes have knocked out a significant part of Russia’s oil refining capacity, triggering oil product shortages, fuel price increases and long queues at filling ​stations in many regions ​across the country’s ⁠11 time zones. 

The Moscow plant, which has been targeted multiple times, processed 11.6 million metric tons of oil in 2024, producing ​2.9 million tons of gasoline and 3.2 million tons of ​diesel, the ⁠latest available data shows.

Ukraine has not commented on the attacks. Both sides say they do not target civilians.

In the wider Moscow region, in addition to the two deaths, ⁠400 ​people, including 70 children, were evacuated from a 21-storey ​apartment block in the Ramenskoye district, and many homes were damaged, said Governor Andrei Vorobyov. 

Russians began three days of voting on Friday in the country’s first wartime parliamentary election. 

The State Duma vote is expected to see the ruling United ​Russia party easily retain its dominance in a political system critics say does not tolerate dissent. 

The Kremlin is likely to present the outcome as evidence of public backing for Putin’s ​policies and for the war, Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War Two, now in its fifth year with no sign of ending soon.

Most anti-war candidates were barred from the ballot. 

Those who did run from the liberal Yabloko party, which has polled in the single digits in recent years but hoped to tap into war fatigue, said they feared for their freedom after courts handed long jail terms to two senior party ​figures before the vote for comments about the conflict deemed illegal by authorities.

Discrediting the army or spreading what authorities regard as fake news are punishable by lengthy prison sentences.

In a ​small act of defiance, Yabloko’s leader, Nikolai Rybakov, demonstratively spoiled his ballot paper, writing his party’s name and the slogan ‘For peace’.

The Kremlin says national unity and some censorship are necessary during what it calls ‌its special military ⁠operation in Ukraine. 

It casts the conflict as part of an existential struggle with a hostile West and says Ukrainian intelligence services and other enemies are stepping up efforts to stir unrest inside Russia.

Russian electoral officials said on Saturday that an online voting system in Moscow had come under cyberattack. 

Kyiv, which has suspended elections under martial law, has dismissed the Russian vote as a ‘pseudo election’.

Putin on Friday also accused Ukraine of trying to interfere in the election, citing what he said was a Ukrainian strike on the home of an election ​official in the Russian-controlled part of Ukraine’s ​Zaporizhzhia region that killed Elena Astanina, the ⁠official. 

Despite what experts see as the election’s predictable outcome, the NEST think-tank in Berlin, co-founded by Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, whom Russian authorities have designated ‘a foreign agent’, said the vote could ​still produce awkward moments for the Kremlin at a time of economic strain.

‘The consequences of the war are increasingly being felt within the ​country, and accumulated anxiety and ⁠frustration may translate into votes for the systemic opposition parties that the Kremlin has allowed to remain on the ballot,’ it said in a note.

It said the Communist Party and the New People Party could attract votes the authorities would prefer to go to United Russia. Both parties have consistently voted in line with United Russia on major issues.

Putin told the nation in a televised address before ⁠the election ​that the vote would underline support for Russian troops fighting in Ukraine.

‘Your choice, and your will, will once ​again demonstrate that millions of people stand behind our soldiers, that we are a united people bound together by shared values, historical memory, and love for our homeland, and that no one will succeed in dividing or intimidating us,’ ​said Putin.

Initial results are expected to start emerging at around 1800 GMT on Sunday, with more complete results available on Monday.