Russia destroyed a wave of Ukrainian drones bound for Moscow, the city’s mayor said on Friday (September 18, 2026), as polling stations opened for the country’s first parliamentary election since the start of the war.

While few doubt President Vladimir Putin’s party will sail to victory again, the vote will serve as a barometer for feelings on the war that has killed hundreds of thousands and undermined the daily lives of Russians.

“More than 350 UAVs flew towards the Moscow region between 8:00 pm (1700 GMT) on 17 September and 7:00 am on 18 September,” Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Telegram.

“Most were reportedly destroyed at the outer defensive perimeter, including 64 UAVs intercepted while approaching Moscow.”

Mr. Putin has ruled Russia since New Year’s Eve 1999 and his United Russia party has dominated Russian politics since the early 2000s.

Moscow has banned criticism of its Ukraine campaign and the Russian elections, tightly controlled by the Kremlin, are bringing few surprises.

The vote to renew the 450 seats in the Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, will run until 1800 GMT on Sunday (September 20, 2026).

Russian strikes killed five civilians and wounded dozens in Ukraine, local officials said Saturday (September 12, 2026), after Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that sending European troops into Ukraine would amount to direct conflict with Russia.

Ukraine is under mounting pressure from Russia’s intensifying air campaign that uses ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones to pierce defences. Moscow’s attacks have targeted Ukraine’s power grid ahead of winter in what officials say is meant to demoralise civilians.

Two people were killed and one wounded when Russian drones struck a residential area overnight in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, regional head Ivan Fedorov said Saturday (September 12).

One person died and three others were wounded in strikes on Kryvyi Rih, according to local officials.

In the Black Sea port of Odesa and the surrounding area, 35 people were wounded overnight in what regional head Oleh Kiper called a “massive attack.” Among the buildings hit was a residential high-rise, whose upper floors were completely destroyed.

Later on Saturday (September 12), two people were killed in a Russian attack on a grocery store in Ukraine’s Zhytomyr region, local officials said.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces struck two chemical industry facilities in Russia, one in Samara and one in Perm. The governors of the regions did not immediately comment, but the Russian independent online news outlet Astra reported drone attacks on chemical plants in both regions.

Putin warns against sending European troops to Ukraine

Mr. Putin, speaking to reporters at a summit of the BRICS group of emerging economies in India on Friday (September 11), said that if European governments send troops into Ukraine, it will mean “a war with Russia.” “Now they’re talking about how they’re considering sending troops into Ukraine. That means a war with Russia,” he said.

Some European leaders have pledged their commitment to a potential peacekeeping force, a prospect that Moscow has repeatedly described as unacceptable.

Mr. Putin also denied that Russia posed any threat to Europe, saying “there is no such threat and never has been.” “We do not threaten, nor do we intend to threaten, European countries,” he said.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Thursday (September 10) that two incidents along Ukraine’s borders with Poland and Moldova this week were a preview of potential intensified Russian provocations at Ukraine’s border crossing points with Europe.

Two people died when Russian drones hit the Starokozache border crossing between Ukraine and Moldova on Tuesday (September 8) night, while a “direct threat” to a Polish-Ukrainian crossing point on Wednesday night was only avoided thanks to cooperation between Warsaw and Kyiv, he said.

Zelenskyy offers to meet Putin at G20

Meanwhile, Mr. Zelenskyy told Deutsche Welle, in an interview published Saturday (September 12), that he would meet Mr. Putin if both leaders were invited to the Group of 20 summit of rich and developing nations in December in Miami.

Mr. Putin’s foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said Saturday (September 12) that the possibility of Mr. Putin attending the summit had not yet been discussed.

The Kremlin in the past has said that Mr. Zelenskyy can come to Moscow if he wants a meeting with Mr. Putin, a proposal Kyiv has rejected.

“If he really wants to meet with Putin, Putin has already said that he could fly to Moscow,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Saturday (September 12).

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov affirmed Saturday (September 12) that Russia is “ready for negotiations,” but that the so-called “special military operation,” as Moscow refers to its war in Ukraine, “will not be suspended during this period of negotiations.”

Strikes killed 19 people in Russia and Ukraine, authorities said Sunday (August 16, 2026), as waves of drones and missiles pummelled civilian infrastructure on both sides.

With fighting at the front at a near standstill and talks frozen, the warring countries have significantly stepped up long-range attacks deep behind each other’s lines, pushing the civilian death toll to its highest levels since the war’s first months in 2022.

In Russia, swarms of Ukrainian drones killed five people in a residential area of the southern Rostov region, regional governor Yuri Slusar said.

Three more people were killed in the Belgorod, Kursk and Moscow regions, along with four others in parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia.

Firefighters try to put out a fire at a city book market following a Russian missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, on August 16, 2026.
| Photo Credit:
AP

Moscow’s regional governor Andrey Vorobyov described the assault as “one of the most massive drone attacks in recent memory”. Russia’s defence ministry said it had intercepted 822 drones across the country overnight.

Kyiv market hit

In Ukraine, a barrage of Russian drones and missiles killed two people and wounded 14 at ArcelorMittal’s steel plant in Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hometown.

The plant, one of Ukraine’s biggest steel producers, said it partially halted operations after the strike damaged its core production facilities.

Another strike hit Kryvyi Rih on Sunday evening (August 16, 2026), killing one person.

Strikes also hit other regions, killing two people in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, one in the border region of Sumy and another in Donetsk in the east.

In Kyiv, a popular outdoor book market at Pochaina, long the place to find rare and antiquarian volumes, was struck. Bookseller Dmytro Semenukha saw all four of his stalls burn to the ground.

“There used to be a store. And books, and flags of all the countries, all the countries. Tonnes of everything. And that’s it,” the 45-year-old told AFP.

In a social media post on the overnight raid, Mr. Zelenskyy said that “wherever the Russians can reach with their ballistic missiles, they strike civilian infrastructure”.

Over the past week, he said, Ukrainian cities had been pummelled by “more than 1,550 attack drones, nearly 1,560 guided aerial bombs, and 62 missiles”, as he renewed his appeal to allies for more air defence.

Russia has carried out near-daily missile and drone strikes across Ukraine since launching its full-scale invasion in early 2022.

It has recently intensified attacks using hard-to-intercept ballistic missiles, exploiting Ukraine’s air defence shortages after the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran diverted supplies.

“When North Korean ballistic missiles destroy infrastructure and claim lives here in Europe, European interceptors cannot simply be allowed to sit in storage,” Mr. Zelenskyy said.

Russia shot down 605 Ukrainian drones during the night over its territory and the annexed Crimean Peninsula, the defence ministry said Thursday (August 6, 2026).

“During the night… air defence systems intercepted and destroyed 605 Ukrainian aerial drones,” the ministry said in a statement.

Also Read | Russian and Ukrainian drone strikes kill at least 5 in each country

The Ministry flagged attacks in the Tver region about 180 kilometres (110 miles) northwest of Moscow, where local authorities reported a logistics centre belonging to the e-commerce giant Wildberries had been damaged.

Regional Governor Vitaly Korolyov said air defence systems had repelled the Ukrainian attack.

“As a result of the fall of debris from one of the drones, the facade of the Wildberries logistics centre was slightly damaged,” he wrote on Telegram, adding that no one had been wounded.

Ukraine has repeatedly struck sites belonging to Wildberries — a popular online commerce platform often described as Russia’s Amazon — across the country since mid-July.

Mikhail Yevrayev, governor of the Yaroslavl region around 250 kilometres north of Moscow, reported the “most massive attack” against his region, saying 92 drones had been shot down.

Debris caused fires in houses and damaged cars, he added on Telegram.

More than four years after the start of Russia’s large-scale offensive against Ukraine, diplomacy is at a standstill and the two countries are ramping up long-range strikes, causing a growing number of civilian casualties.

Ukrainian drones struck three Russian oil refineries, Russian tankers on the Sea of Azov, and pipeline pumping stations, Ukrainian and Russian officals said on Wednesday (July 8, 2026), in a major night of strikes ranging from the Ukrainian border to the Urals mountains.

Russia has been suffering from acute fuel shortages in some regions as Ukraine wages a drone campaign against its oil refineries and energy infrastructure, with Kyiv hitting targets ever further from its own territory.

Kyiv on Monday (July 6, 2026) hit the Omsk refinery, Russia’s largest, deep inside Siberia, around 2,700 km from Ukrainian-held territory.

In separate statements, Ukraine’s general staff and special forces said drones had hit the TANECO and TAIF-NK oil refineries in Tatarstan’s Nizhnekamsk, the Saratov oil refinery, and the Borisoglebsk mili tary airbase in Voronezh region.

Ukraine also said it had struck a petroleum products pumping station in Russia’s Bashkortostan.

Russia bans diesel exports

Russia introduced ⁠a ban on diesel exports on Wednesday (July 8, 2026) as part of a raft of measures to support the domestic fuel ‌market amid systematic Ukrainian drone attacks on oil refineries.

Drivers in many regions are ‌facing ⁠hours-long lines to refuel, as intensifying Ukrainian ⁠strikes on Russian energy infrastructure squeeze supplies of diesel and gasoline.

Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak told a televised government meeting ​that the fuel ‌situation remained complex and that “it is clear that the current situation at filling stations is causing concern among the public.”

“Today, a ban on diesel ‌fuel exports was introduced, and this will ​make it possible to increase supplies to the domestic market,” he said, adding ⁠that Russia would start importing fuel in July.

The government said the ban, which includes producers of ‌the fuel, will be in place until July 31.

Benchmark European diesel margins <LGOc1-LCOc1> rose to a record $60.17 per barrel after Russia banned exports.

At least 10 people were killed in Ukrainian attacks on Russia and Moscow-occupied territory, local officials said on Friday (July 4, 2026), as Ukraine reported five killed in Russian attacks.

The exchange of deadly strikes comes a day after Russia unleashed an overnight pummelling — one of the worst of the conflict — on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, leaving at least 30 dead.

On Friday (July 4, 2026), a Ukrainian strike on a market in the Russian-occupied part of the southern Zaporizhzhia region killed five people, the Kremlin-appointed governor said.

“This is a strike against civilian life — against people who had come to buy groceries,” Yevgeny Balitsky said on Telegram.

He earlier said three people had been killed in separate attacks in the region.

Two other people died in strikes on Russia’s western Belgorod and Bryansk regions, both bordering Ukraine, officials said.

Ukraine, meanwhile, reported a strike on its northeastern region of Sumy that set a house ablaze and killed four people — including a toddler.

“Sadly, two women, an elderly man, and a small child — a girl not yet two years old — were killed. The Russian strike took her life along with her mother’s,” the head of the Sumy regional military administration, Oleg Grygorov, said on Telegram.

Three more people were wounded in the attack.

One person was killed and five wounded in the central eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, regional military administration head Oleksandr Ganzha said on Telegram.

Kyiv’s air force said on Friday that Russia launched two missiles and 105 drones at Ukraine overnight.

Russia meanwhile shot down 155 Ukrainian drones overnight from Thursday (July 2, 2026) to Friday (Juy 3, 2026) over its regions and annexed Crimea, according to the Russian Defence Ministry.

On Thursday (July 2, 2026), Russia unleashed one of the most intense drone and missile attacks to hit the Ukrainian capital since the start of its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

At least 30 people were killed in Kyiv, according to a toll provided Friday (July 3, 2026) by rescue services.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday (June 28, 2026) vowed to ensure security in his country and overcome “challenges” as Ukraine has stepped up its retaliatory attacks on targets within Russia amid Moscow’s four-year war on its neighbour.

“Yes, we see the problems, we are aware of them and are responding to them, but we will certainly ensure the security of both the country and our citizens, as well as the inviolability of Russia’s borders,” Mr. Putin said at the United Russia party congress.

“We will undoubtedly overcome all the challenges facing us today, including terrorist attacks on our territory and infrastructure facilities,” he added.

Russian drones killed one person and wounded two dozen others in cities across Ukraine, local authorities announced on Monday (June 1, 2026), as Kyiv and Moscow step up long-range strikes with peace talks stalling.

One person was killed in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson and eight people were wounded in the northern town of Chernigiv, where power was cut to 10,000 people, authorities said.

Emergency services published images from Chernigiv showing teams of firefighters dousing a large blaze in the middle of the night following the attacks.

The Ukrainian air force said Russian forces had launched 265 combat drones in the barrage, and that its air defence units had downed 228 of the unmanned aerial vehicles.

Seven people were wounded in Russian strikes in the Black Sea port city of Odesa, four more in the central city of Kharkiv, one in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia and at least two more were hurt in Kherson.

Moscow launches attacks almost nightly on Ukraine, which has stepped up its retaliatory strikes in recent months, mainly targeting Russian energy infrastructure.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine launched in February 2022 has become the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II, killing hundreds of thousands of people and displacing millions.

Explosions echoed over Kyiv on Tuesday (April 28, 2026) during a rare daytime Russian drone attack on the capital, after the two sides launched strikes that left six dead.

A major oil refinery in southern Russia was also set ablaze, triggering a local state of emergency as thick black smoke billowed over the coastal town of Tuapse.