Kyiv: Russia unleashed waves of missiles and drones at Ukraine early Monday, killing at least 21 people in attacks that exposed widening gaps in country’s air defences more than four years into Moscow’s full-scale invasion, authorities said.
All of the ballistic missiles launched by Russia struck their targets, underscoring Kyiv’s need for more US-made Patriot interceptor missiles – a point Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will likely reiterate at a NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, this week.
Fifteen people were killed in the capital of Kyiv, which was Russia’s main target, and 56 were injured, according to administrative head Tymur Tkachenko. Another six people were killed in the wider Kyiv region and 21 were inured, according to Mykola Kalashnyk, the head of the regional administration, and other emergency officials.
Emergency workers searched for survivors in the rubble of residential high-rises in two locations that suffered direct hits.
Moscow has stepped up strikes on Kyiv in retaliation for Ukraine’s recent long-range strikes, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. Those attacks have caused severe fuel shortages and put pressure on President Vladimir Putin.
On Thursday, a Russian strike killed 31 people in Kyiv, the deadliest attack in the capital this year.
Ukraine’s advances in drone technology have given it an edge in recent months, analysts and Western officials say, striking supply routes behind the front line, stripping the Russian army of momentum on the battlefield and slowing its advance.
But Russia is now exploiting a different kind of momentum: vulnerabilities in Ukraine’s air defences, which remain heavily reliant on the Patriot missile systems to intercept ballistic missiles it can rarely shoot down. The war in the Middle East has strained the global supply of Patriot interceptors – a shortage now felt keenly in Ukraine.
Zelenskyy notes gaps in stopping ballistic missiles
Ukraine’s air force said Russia fired 351 drones and 68 missiles overnight, targeting mainly Kyiv, and all 29 ballistic missiles struck their targets.
“To intercept ballistics, we need the means for interception,” air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said on national television. “Russians are certainly using the fact that there is a serious deficit of interceptor missiles now, in Ukraine and the world.”
Ahead of the NATO summit in Turkey, Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces had performed well against drones and cruise missiles but not against ballistic missiles – a shortfall he blamed on insufficient supplies of interceptors. He urged US and European partners at the summit to bolster Ukraine’s air defense and protect civilians.
“As long as Patriot missiles remain in our allies’ stockpiles, Russia is only encouraged to keep vanquishing’ residential buildings. The United States and Europe have enough strength to stop this terror,” he said on X following the attack.
Ukraine’s Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said Russia is deliberately ramping up ballistic missile attacks on a scale unseen before, exploiting the acute shortage of Patriot interceptors. “Fewer such missiles are produced worldwide each month than the enemy fires at Ukraine in that same period,” he said.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said the attack targeted weapons factories in Kyiv, including sites it said produce drones, armored vehicles and missiles, as well as facilities repairing air defense systems and fuel and energy infrastructure in the capital and surrounding region. The claims could not be independently verified.
Russia’s attacks have repeatedly hit civilian areas. More than 16,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the war, according to the United Nations.
“These are residential buildings. Places where people slept and lived their ordinary lives,” Tkachenko said in a post on Telegram.
A residential building in the Podilskyi district partially collapsed, he said. In the Darnytsia district, several multistory buildings were damaged and people were believed to be buried in the rubble.
In Kyiv’s suburb of Vyshneve, about 600 residents were evacuated due to the risk of unexploded munitions, Ukraine’s Emergency Service said.
Witnesses recount harrowing escape
Khrystyna Piatetska, 20, a resident of Kyiv’s Darnytskyi district, said she began screaming after the first strike, which was followed by a second blast that blew out the windows in her apartment building.
The lights went out, a burning smell filled the air and the stairwell was thick with smoke, she said.
“When we were leaving the building, bodies were lying there,” Piatetska said. “When we got downstairs, cars started exploding, and we came out from under the rubble straight into the fire.”
Halina Ivanivna, 61, said she was awakened by the first strike about 2 am. Moments later, her apartment building began collapsing around her.
“Everything was falling down,” she said. Water poured through the building as smoke filled the air while emergency crews rushed to evacuate residents.
About five minutes after the initial impact, a second strike hit, she said.
Ukrainian attacks on Russian targets
Russia’s Defence Ministry said its air defences downed 519 Ukrainian drones overnight.
Ukraine’s military said its Special Operations Forces struck the Omsk oil refinery in western Siberia, which it described as Russia’s largest, located nearly 2,500 kilometres (1,550 miles) from Ukraine’s border. That added to a long list of Russia’s key refineries struck in recent months.
Regional Gov Vitaly Khotsenko said several Ukrainian drones hit in Omsk but gave no other details.
An energy provider in Russian-held Crimea reported a blackout across the peninsula following Ukrainian attacks early Monday. The Moscow-appointed head of the city of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said the attacks cut power that was restored with backup equipment.
Ukraine’s military confirmed it struck several Russian energy and military facilities used to supply Russia’s armed forces with fuel and support its war efforts.
In the Russian city of Yaroslavl, two people were wounded in an attack in which over 70 Ukrainian drones were downed, according to regional Governor Mikhail Yavrayev. He didn’t say if any facilities were damaged, but the Astra online news outlet said they caused a fire at an oil refinery.
Ukrainian drone attack on the Leningrad region north of Moscow damaged unspecified infrastructure at the Luga training ground, as well as in the areas of Baltic Sea ports of Ust-Luga and Vysotsk, Gov Alexander Drozdenko said.
