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An unprecedented night: Ukraine fired more than 1,000 drones and a mix of missiles at Russia overnight into Sunday, September 20 — the final day of Russia's parliamentary vote. Russia's Defense Ministry logged 1,110 intercepts, its highest single-night count on record, while Moscow's mayor cited a broader regional tally of 1,600.
- Casualties and damage: At least two people died and roughly 20 were hurt in the Moscow region, with two more deaths, including an election official, reported in Russian-occupied Kherson. The heaviest single hit landed on the Gazprom Neft refinery in Kapotnya, about 15 kilometers from the Kremlin.
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A new weapon and a scripted vote: Ukraine appears to have used its homegrown Pelican ballistic missile in combat for the first known time, as Russia's tightly managed election wrapped up with United Russia's dominance never in question.
Ukraine launched what looks like the most extensive drone and missile operation of the war against the Russian capital overnight into Sunday, hitting an oil refinery and residential buildings across the Moscow region just as the final hours of Russia's three-day parliamentary vote were closing out.
A Barrage That Outpaced Every Previous Night of the War
More than 1,000 drones and a mix of long-range missiles crossed into Russian airspace overnight, according to CBS News, with several hundred aimed specifically at Moscow. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin gave a larger figure, telling reporters that regional air defenses had brought down roughly 1,600 drones since Saturday, about 450 of which were headed for the city, per Al Jazeera. Russia's Defense Ministry offered a separate count, saying its systems had destroyed 1,110 drones overnight — a figure ABC News confirmed was the largest the ministry has ever disclosed in a single night. Bloomberg put that number in context, noting it eclipsed the ministry's previous high of 822 intercepts, logged back in August. The tallies don't line up neatly with one another, but every account points to the same conclusion: this was a scale of assault Moscow hadn't absorbed before.
Death Toll Climbs as Fires Spread Across the Region
Moscow region Governor Andrei Vorobyov said two people were killed and about 20 injured across the wider region, identifying the dead as a 74-year-old man and a 44-year-old woman, according to NPR. ABC News offered more specifics: a drone that struck an apartment block in Sofьino, southwest of the city, killed one resident and wounded five others, while a second person died in the Orekhovo-Zuevsky district to the east. A separate fire tore through an apartment complex in the Ramensky district, forcing roughly 400 residents to evacuate and damaging about 20 parked cars, with a warehouse fire reported nearby as well. All four of the capital's airports — Vnukovo, Domodedovo, Zhukovsky and Sheremetyevo — briefly suspended arrivals and departures on orders from aviation regulator Rosaviatsiya before flights resumed later Sunday morning. Separately, CNBC reported two additional deaths in Russian-occupied Kherson, including a local election official.
The Kapotnya Refinery Absorbs the Worst of It
The single most damaging strike hit the Gazprom Neft-owned refinery in Moscow's Kapotnya district, a facility that sits roughly 15 kilometers from the Kremlin and supplies a large share of the capital's fuel, per prior reporting confirmed across multiple outlets this year. Sobyanin acknowledged that a facility on-site had been damaged and caught fire; Ukrainian officials said the strike had reached core processing units at the plant. Sobyanin framed the entire overnight operation as a bid to derail the vote itself, telling reporters it "was clearly planned with the aim of disrupting the elections" — while insisting the effort had failed, per Al Jazeera.
A New Missile Makes Its Combat Debut
President Volodymyr Zelensky said the operation drew on a wide slice of Ukraine's domestically produced arsenal — including FP-1 and RZ-100 drones, the Palianytsia strike weapon, and the long-range Flamingo cruise missile — targeting what he described as a major Russian oil facility and an associated logistics site. The name that stood out, though, was Pelican: a ballistic weapon widely linked to Fire Point's FP-7 program, which New Voice of Ukraine reported may mark the first publicly confirmed combat use of a Ukrainian-built ballistic missile. Both Flamingo and the Pelican-linked FP-7 come out of the same Ukrainian defense firm, Fire Point, part of Kyiv's broader push to build longer-range strike capability without relying on Western-supplied systems. Zelensky also said a facility in Russia's Voronezh region was hit and that the operation involved several of Ukraine's intelligence and special-operations units.
An Election With Its Outcome Already Written
The strikes fell on the last of three days of voting for Russia's State Duma, the country's first nationwide parliamentary election since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022. Support for United Russia, the party most closely tied to President Vladimir Putin, was polling at nearly 40 percent heading into the vote, according to Foreign Policy. The Moscow Times described the contest as one of the most restricted in the country's post-Soviet history, with most anti-war candidates barred from the ballot before voting even began. Even so, a small number of independent observers still showed up. One woman monitoring for the liberal Yabloko party in St. Petersburg told the outlet, on condition of anonymity, that showing up still felt like "one part of changing Russia" within her control.
Ukraine's Own Capital Didn't Go Untouched
Russia kept up its own strikes through the night, and Ukrainian officials in the Kyiv region reported civilian deaths from the barrage, though the count varies by source: Ukraine's State Emergency Service put the toll at three, including two children, while the head of the Kyiv region's military administration told CNN that four people died, three of them children. Zelensky said that in the week leading up to the strikes, Russia had launched more than 2,000 attack drones, roughly 1,700 aerial bombs and 19 missiles into Ukrainian territory. Even as Moscow projected calm through a carefully stage-managed election, the night's exchange underscored that the aerial war between the two capitals is still escalating, not winding down.
