MOSCOW — Ukraine launched what Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin called the biggest — and “unprecedented” — enemy drone attack yet on the Russian capital on Sunday, Sept. 20, 2026, as Russians voted on the final day of a tightly controlled State Duma election that President Vladimir Putin has cast as a test of support for the war in Ukraine.

A facility at the Moscow Oil Refinery in the Kapotnya district was damaged, Sobyanin said on Telegram. CNBC, citing Sobyanin and election authorities, reported the overnight strikes killed two people in the Moscow region and two more in the Russian-held part of Ukraine’s Kherson region, including an election official. Separately, CBS News reported that Moscow region Gov. Andrei Vorobyov said the attack killed two people and wounded about 20 across the wider Moscow region — a 74-year-old man and a 44-year-old woman, he said. Those figures are attributed source-by-source; they are not mashed into a single invented death toll.

“The biggest attack by enemy drones has been repelled,” Sobyanin said, per CNBC. “This unprecedented attack was clearly planned with the aim of disrupting the elections. The enemy did not succeed.” CBS quoted him describing the wave as the “largest ever” attack on the capital and saying damage hit the Moscow oil refinery and a residential building.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense claimed its forces shot down a total of 1,110 Ukrainian drones overnight across the country, Crimea, and the Black Sea — matching CBS and ABC reports of the MoD claim, with ABC noting it as the largest overnight figure in the ministry’s recent Telegram tallies. Treat that shoot-down total as a Russian MoD claim, not an independently verified count. Separately, Sobyanin said 450 drones headed for Moscow were destroyed; Reuters, citing his Telegram channel, also reported he said Russia had downed more than 1,600 drones since Saturday, including those 450. Those Sobyanin totals are distinct from the MoD’s overnight 1,110 figure.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv’s long-range strikes “had a very significant impact in the Moscow region last night,” claiming a hit on “one of Russia’s key oil industry facilities” and a logistics site that, he said, helps sustain Russia’s war economy (CBS, ABC, POLITICO Europe). Ukraine’s General Staff later said three units at the Moscow Oil Refinery were damaged, including the AVT-6 distillation unit (Ukrainska Pravda). Fire Point, a Ukrainian munitions maker, said its FP-1 drones were used against the refinery, ABC reported. Independent verification of unit-level damage remains thin outside Ukrainian and Russian official statements.

Vorobyov also reported evacuations and fires at apartment buildings in districts around the capital, including hundreds evacuated from a high-rise in the Ramensky area (ABC, Reuters). All four of Moscow’s international airports temporarily faced flight restrictions overnight before restrictions were lifted Sunday morning, ABC said, citing Rosaviatsiya.

The State Duma vote is the first since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Critics say the system does not tolerate dissent; most anti-war candidates were barred. Kyiv has dismissed the balloting as a “pseudo election.” War and election claims from both capitals reward skepticism: Moscow’s MoD shoot-down numbers, Sobyanin’s disruption narrative, and Kyiv’s infrastructure-damage claims each come from parties with every incentive to shape the scoreboard. What is on the open record is a mayor calling the capital under an unprecedented drone wave, a damaged oil refinery in Kapotnya, attributed civilian deaths in the Moscow region (and, per CNBC, additional deaths in occupied Kherson), and a wartime parliament vote continuing on schedule.

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