Ukraine fires over 1,000 drones at Russia, including 'largest ever'
attack on Moscow
[September 21, 2026]
Ukrainian forces fired more than 1,000 drones at Russia
overnight, including hundreds that were launched toward Moscow,
officials said Sunday, as the Kremlin was wrapping up the third and last
day of its parliamentary elections.
Moscow’s mayor described the wave of drones as the “largest ever” drone
attack on the Russian capital and said there had been damage to the
Moscow Oil Refinery, which is among several sites that supply the
Russian capital, and a residential building.
Across the wider Moscow region, the attack killed two people and wounded
20, local Gov. Andrei Vorobyov said. The dead were a 74-year-old man and
a 44-year-old woman, he said.
Since Russia’s invasion more than four years ago, Ukraine has become a
global leader in military drone technology, deploying domestically
produced long-range drones alongside missiles for strikes deep inside
Russia. Its drone technology has impressed governments and defense
manufacturers around the world.
Kyiv is aiming to make the Russian public feel the war’s consequences
and pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin into negotiating a peace
settlement. Putin has so far shown no signs he intends to stop the
invasion.
Instead, Moscow and Kyiv have been drawn into an escalating duel of
long-range aerial strikes as fighting along the roughly 1,250-kilometer
(780-mile) front line in eastern and southern Ukraine has slowed,
restricted by large numbers of drones and ground robots threatening
troop movements.
Ukraine says it has targeted infrastructure to damage Russia's war
machine
Writing on social media, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said
that Kyiv had used a range of missiles and drones in the attack —
including Ukraine’s domestically made Flamingo and Pelican missiles — to
hit oil and logistics facilities.
"These are billions of dollars that sustain the war machine," Zelenskyy
said, referring to the financial pressure that Kyiv hopes to put on
Russia's economy.
Ukraine also continued to fend off Russian attacks, Zelenskyy said. A
Russian drone strike hit a monastery in Ukraine's Kherson region
Saturday, killing a member of the clergy and wounding four people, he
said.
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The damaged rooftop of a residential building after a Russian drone
strike in Boiarka, Ukraine, Sunday, Sept. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy
Maloletka)
A Russian attack on the Ukrainian capital also killed two children
and their mother on Saturday evening, said Tymur Tkachenko, head of
the Kyiv regional state administration. He later said that another
child wounded in the same attack had died in hospital on Sunday.
Separately, Zelenskyy said he spoke with U.S. President Donald Trump
on Sunday. Writing on X, Zelenskyy said they agreed they would meet
next week at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Russia votes in an election devoid of opposition
The attack took place on the final day of Russia's first wartime
parliamentary election — balloting that has been virtually devoid of
opposition to President Vladimir Putin’s policies and is all but
certain to cement the Kremlin’s dominance.
Russia was also holding the vote in the four Ukrainian regions that
Moscow illegally annexed after the war began but still doesn’t fully
control, and in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that was illegally
annexed by Russia in 2014. Kyiv has denounced the action as illegal.
In a Russian-occupied area of Ukraine's Kherson region, a Ukrainian
attack killed a member of the local electoral committee, Russia's
Central Election Commission said in a statement.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense said Sunday that its forces shot down a
total of 1,110 Ukrainian drones across Russia, as well as over the
annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and the waters of the Black
Sea.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that 450 drones had been destroyed
en route to the Russian capital, and that the attack had damaged the
Moscow Oil Refinery and a residential building.
He said the “unprecedented attack” on Moscow was an attempt to
disrupt the elections. "The enemy failed in this regard," he said.
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