A woman rides on a bus as smoke rises from the area of Gazprom Neft’s Moscow oil refinery in Moscow, Russia, on Sept. 20, 2026. (AFP via Getty Images)
On the night of Sept. 12, Ukrainian drones attacked Taganrog. Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) reported hits on an FPV drone production facility, two drone storage sites, a Pantsir air defense system, and a radar.
Local authorities, as usual, listed something else: 16 commercial buildings, five cars, a football club, and a Svetofor store.
Regional social media channels summed it up in a single sentence about "drone debris" that set a store and several non-residential buildings on fire.
Under a post by a Rostov community on VKontakte, one commenter clarified: "One big-box store selling aircraft tires has been burning since 4 a.m. and is still burning."
They were referring to a military airfield where, judging by satellite imagery, fuel tanks caught fire.
Three days later, missiles struck the city.
Ukraine's General Staff reported explosions and a fire at the Atlant Aero plant, which manufactures Molniya strike drones. Russian authorities listed broken windows, a gas pipe, a grocery store, and an Ozon warehouse. The regional communities we monitor published 178 posts about the two strikes on Taganrog. Only one identified the target. Atlant Aero was not mentioned once.
The case of Taganrog offers a clear picture of how Russia's audience is structured. It is divided into segments, each seeing a different war.
Most people get their news from television and local online communities: television remains the main source of information for 61% of Russians.
Those interested in the war also read pro-war bloggers, known in Russia as Z-war bloggers. The smallest group reads independent media run by Russians abroad.
A month ago, using Novorossiysk as an example, we wrote that Russians do not see strikes on military targets. In September, we expanded our monitoring beyond 1,000 regional communities on Telegram and VKontakte to include more than 40 major nationwide channels, giving us a broader picture.
The first group gets the authorities' version.
On Sept. 9, the Ukrainian Navy said a Neptune missile had hit the Admiral Essen frigate in Novorossiysk.
Of 246 regional posts about that night, only one mentioned ships, while nearly 100 posts reported deaths: according to Russian authorities, four people were killed in the city.
Regional Russia knows about the civilian deaths, but not the frigate.
On Sept. 22, Ukraine's General Staff reported a strike on a base near the village of Tsymbulovo in Oryol Oblast, from which Russia launches jet-powered Geran drones.
Over the following month, the village's name did not appear in any of the thousand communities we monitored, including those in Oryol.
The shutdown of the Moscow oil refinery after a Sept. 20 strike, reported by Reuters, appeared in just six of 407 posts. The state-run channels in our sample, Solovyov and Komsomolskaya Pravda, simply repeated official statements in nine out of every 10 posts.
This feed creates the impression that air defenses shoot down hundreds of drones and debris falls on residential buildings.
Readers of Russian military bloggers know much more.
On Sept. 12, the Voyennyy Osvedomitel channel identified a military airfield as the likely target in Taganrog. On Sept. 18, it published a satellite image of damaged Atlant Aero workshops.
Overall, military bloggers identified the target in nine of 16 posts about Taganrog.
On the Moscow oil refinery, Z-blogger Fighterbomber wrote: "Let me remind you, this is the most heavily protected oil refinery in the country. Perhaps even in the world. I predict it will be attacked more than once."
But this knowledge is one-sided. The same channels report Russian strikes on Ukraine far more frequently and in greater detail.
Some 92% of reactions to such posts are positive. And Voyennyy Osvedomitel presented the strike on Tsymbulovo as a story of resilience: the shelters are sturdy, and the launchers are cheap to replace.
Independent media and those run from abroad provide the most comprehensive coverage of the strikes: they identified the target in 14 of 20 posts about Taganrog. Yet they have the smallest audiences.
In our sample, a typical military blogger's post about a strike on Russia receives 73,000 views, compared with 14,000 for a post by an independent media outlet.
Everything changes when a strike hits close to home.
The official account then clashes with what people heard during the night, and they start asking questions.
Under a post about Taganrog, people write: "Your Telegram channels say it wasn't just the store" and "When will they finally learn to tell the truth?"
In Oryol, a woman asked the governor about nighttime explosions during a live broadcast. She heard an explanation about a "piece of a drone" and recounted it in the comments: "Short and clear. Yes, that piece fell with such a bang that almost the whole city heard it."
The same community debunked a deepfake in which the governor supposedly admitted that the region lacked air defenses. The comments under the debunking post read: "This fake is telling the truth" and "I'd vote for the fake."
In Salekhard, the capital of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, people reasoned this way after a gas plant in Novy Urengoy was hit: "How did it happen that the attack was repelled, the drone was turned into debris, and the facility it attacked is on fire? So the attack wasn't repelled, and this wasn't debris. It hit exactly what it was supposed to hit."
The numbers reflect this pattern, too. In communities based in the region that was hit, 34% of substantive comments question the effectiveness of defenses and the official figures. Another 23% describe what people saw and heard themselves or ask their neighbors about it.
They do not always find the right answers.
Novy Urengoy lies nearly 3,000 kilometers (about 1864 miles) from the Ukrainian border, and drones reached the city for the first time. The neighboring Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug banned the publication of anything about drones that same day.
The most popular comment about the strike in our databases reads: "It's been obvious for a long time that they aren't being launched from Ukraine."
Where the authorities stay silent, Russians find their own answers, and they are not always right.
Ordinary Russians in the regions know little about this war. They are told about downed drones and damaged buildings, and as long as the explosions are far away, that is enough.
Questions emerge when a strike hits their own city. In September, Yamalo-Nenets appeared on our map for the first time, and communities in 24 regions posted about the strike.
Questioning the authorities does not necessarily mean wanting the war to end. In the aftermath of the month's largest attack, the one on Moscow, 59% of substantive comments blamed the authorities and air defenses, while 16% blamed Ukraine and the West. Yet only one in 12 called for the war to end.
To sum up, here is what ordinary Russians were not told in the news in September: a strike drone factory and a military airfield in Taganrog; a frigate carrying Kalibr missiles in Novorossiysk; a launch base for jet-powered Geran drones; the shutdown of the capital's main oil refinery; and a gas plant in Yamalo-Nenets.
Russians in the regions continue to be shielded from learning by accident that the war is not going as victoriously as Putin claims. The results are rather underwhelming.
Editor's note: The opinions expressed in the op-ed section are those of the authors and do not purport to reflect the views of the Kyiv Independent.