Moscow's mayor described the wave of drones as the "largest ever" attack on the Russian capital and said there had been damage to a Moscow oil refinery and a residential building.
Page A3From§Eachthe sunrise edition — 20 September 2026
Refinery burns days after Trump declares Russia and Ukraine agreed to spare energy infrastructure.
As it ran on the front
I had this written down. Just a second — bear with me, I keep it all in one notebook, which is either a filing system or the reason I can never find anything; my wife has an opinion, I have a system. Here — September 7th. Did the special envoy, Steve Witkoff, call the talks in Moscow and Kyiv "substantive progress"? That's what I've got, underlined, and I don't remember why I underlined it, but I did.
Same page, next line down, and I wrote this the same day, so it has to be off the same story. Did the Russians and Ukrainians agree, between themselves, ahead of that visit, to a three-day no-shoot policy? Not Washington's idea, is how the item reads — the two of them making that arrangement on their own, and the American negotiators going in afterward to build additional dialogue on top of it. I want to be careful here, because I got this wrong the first time I said it out loud. Was it their agreement, made before the visit, and not a thing Washington arranged for them? That's what the page says.…
…(cont) I flip forward. September 13th — six days later — Tatarstan. Were two civilians killed there, by a Ukrainian drone? Same day, Odesa — a Russian drone, a fire near the Polish border. I'm not asking that to score anything. I'm asking because it's the next page in the same notebook, and by then, were the three days already up?
Now, the car. I've got a fan belt that's been "about to go" since some point in the spring — I keep saying so, my mechanic keeps agreeing, and nothing about the belt changes. Is it fair to say an announcement that something's been handled, and the actual state of the belt, can sit on two different pages without either one canceling the other out? That's all I've got about the car.
Forward again. September 20th — yesterday. Did Ukraine fire over a thousand drones at Russia, with hundreds of them aimed at Moscow? That's the big one on the page. Did the mayor of Moscow put it on the record, in their own words, as the "largest ever" attack on that city, in this war? Were two people killed and twenty hurt, per the local official? Was there a ballistic missile in the mix too — new, first time it shows up in the reporting tied to this particular strike, in the account attributed to Zelenskyy and carried by the wire? I don't know what kind. The notebook doesn't say. I called the corner store and forgot why I'd picked up the phone — that happens now, don't put that in the column — oh. It's already in the column.
And the plumes. Smoke over the city, Sunday morning, and among the targets, an oil refinery — was there damage to it? The dog was scratching at the door the whole time I was reading that part, wanted out, got out, came back in smelling like the yard.
Excuse me — before I let this go — there's one more line on the page I keep circling back to. Did all of it — the thousand drones, the new missile, the refinery — land days after a separate announcement, attributed to the President, that Kyiv and Moscow had agreed to stop hitting each other's energy infrastructure? That's the sentence, near as I can read my own handwriting. Energy infrastructure. Stop hitting it. And the thing that's damaged, per the mayor's own city, on the page right after that announcement went out — is that the refinery?
“They told us the deal was "stop hitting the power plants," and days after that announcement the biggest strike of the whole war lands on an actual refinery — that's not a ceasefire, that's a press release with a fuse on it. You don't get to announce a truce and then let both sides go back to torching each other's energy grid before the ink's dry. Two people are dead in Tatarstan, two more near Moscow, and the only thing that actually stopped was anybody's patience for the next "progress" briefing.”
“Look, "substantive progress" is a technical term — it means people are still in the room, and for three whole days, they were, which is not nothing in this business. Did I just call three days a real ceasefire? I mean — no, that tracks, that's how these negotiations work, you build in increments. The refinery thing is unfortunate timing, sure, but nobody in the announcement said "permanent" — they said "agreed," and those aren't the same word — that doesn't sound like me, forget I said that.”
The receipts
Ukraine and Russia have continued attacks on each other's energy infrastructure despite an announcement by President Donald Trump on Monday that they had agreed to stop.
Across the wider Moscow region, the attack killed two people and wounded 20, a local official said Sunday.
Plumes of smoke rose over Moscow on Sunday morning after a Ukrainian drone and missile attack on the city in which a major oil refinery was among the targets.
· Ukrainian drones kill two in Russia as Moscow hits main port hub in Black Sea from the morgue, 13 Sep 2026
· Ukraine launches drone attacks on multiple Oblasts of Russia, including Moscow, prompting all flights to be suspended at Vnukovo International Airport and Moscow Domodedovo Airport. Bryansk Governor A from the morgue, 10 Sep 2024
· Ukrainian drone kills two civilians in Russia after Putin warns against deployment of European troops from the morgue, 13 Sep 2026
· Witkoff touts 'substantive progress' after peace talks with Ukraine, Russia from the morgue, 7 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.