RTÉ counts four dead in Kyiv and two in Moscow; two other reports count none

One night, four reports. All four say Ukraine fired more than 1,000 drones at Russia overnight, and all four place it on the third and final day of Russia's first wartime parliamentary election. They part company over who died, and over whose phrase "largest ever" is.

The numbers count different things. Ukraine fired more than 1,000, all four say. Russia's defence ministry says its forces shot down 1,110 across Russia, Crimea and the Black Sea. Sobyanin says 450 were destroyed before reaching the capital. Only the first is a count of drones launched.

Not settled. Whether this was the largest attack on Moscow of the war: no report we hold compares it with an earlier one. Whether it was aimed at the vote: Sobyanin says the "unprecedented attack" was an attempt to disrupt the election and "the enemy failed"; Volodymyr Zelensky describes oil and logistics targets, and no report has Kyiv mention the election at all. And no report names a single person killed, on either side.

What this is about. One night of long-range drone attacks between Russia and Ukraine, and four reports that counted the dead in four different ways.

How it got here. Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, and invaded Ukraine in February 2022; the war has run since. Both governments now strike far behind the front line — Ukraine at fuel and supply targets inside Russia, Russia at Ukrainian cities. Russia held a parliamentary election over three days, 18 to 20 September 2026, its first since the invasion. It ran the vote in Crimea and in the four Ukrainian regions it annexed after the war began but does not fully control; Kyiv called that illegal. The Morning Star describes the ballot in its own voice as "virtually devoid of opposition" to President Vladimir Putin's policies. The drone attack landed on the last day of voting.

Who the actors are. Zelensky is Ukraine's president; he says Ukraine used its Flamingo and Pelican missiles and drones against oil and logistics facilities — "billions of dollars that sustain the war machine". Sergei Sobyanin is mayor of Moscow, the city; Andrei Vorobyov is governor of the Moscow region, the separate territory around it, which is where the two deaths were reported. Tymur Tkachenko heads Kyiv's city administration and is the source for the Kyiv deaths. Every figure in this story — dead, wounded, drones fired, drones shot down — comes from a government official on one side or the other, and no report we hold checks any of them against anything else.

What is at stake. Two claims, both unsettled in what we hold: that the attack was the largest Moscow has faced, which would say something about how far Ukraine can now reach; and that it was meant to wreck an election, which is the Russian mayor's account and not Kyiv's stated one.

Where it stands. Voting closed on 20 September. No report we hold carries a result.