Russian missile and drone attack kills at least 21 people in Ukraine

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.

The ballistic missiles launched by Russia struck their targets, underscoring Kyiv’s shortage of Patriot interceptor missiles ahead of a NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey. The attack came hours after Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that a large-scale attack was imminent.

Fifteen people were killed in the capital, 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.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said the attack targeted weapons factories in Kyiv, including sites it said produce drones, sea drones, armoured vehicles and missiles, as well as facilities that repair air defence systems and fuel and energy infrastructure in the city and surrounding region. The claims could not be independently verified.

Russia’s aerial attacks on Ukraine 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,” said Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s City Military Administration in a post on Telegram.

A residential building in the Podilskyi district partially collapsed, he said. In the Darnytsia district, several multistorey buildings were damaged and people were believed to be trapped under the rubble.

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, the smell of burning 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, a 61-year-old Kyiv resident, said she woke to the sound of the first strike at around 2 a.m. Moments later, her apartment building began to collapse 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.

Lack of interceptors

The new attack came days after a Russian strike killed 31 people in the capital on Thursday, the deadliest for the capital this year. Russia’s Defence Ministry said the bombardment was retaliation for Ukraine’s recent long-range strikes, which have caused severe fuel shortages and pressured President Vladimir Putin.

Ukraine’s air force said Russia fired hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles at the country overnight, targeting mainly Kyiv, and 29 ballistic missiles that were launched struck their targets, underscoring how little Ukraine can do to stop them.

“To intercept ballistics, we need the means for interception,” air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said on national television, commenting on the attack. “Russians are certainly using the fact that there is a serious deficit of interceptor missiles now, in Ukraine and the world.”

Russia is exploiting vulnerabilities in Ukraine’s air defences, which remain heavily reliant on the U.S. Patriot systems to intercept ballistic missiles it can rarely shoot down any other way. The war in the Middle East has strained the global supply of Patriot interceptors, already produced in limited numbers.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is expected to attend the NATO summit, said on X that Ukrainian forces had performed well against drones and cruise missiles but not against Russian ballistic missiles — a shortfall he blamed on insufficient interceptor supplies. He urged U.S. and European partners to leave the summit with strong decisions to bolster Ukraine’s air defence and protect civilian lives.

“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 in a statement following the attack.

Ukraine’s Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said Russia is deliberately ramping up ballistic missile attacks on a scale not seen 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.

Meanwhile, an energy provider in Russia-occupied Crimea reported a blackout across the peninsula due to “external impact.” The Moscow-appointed head of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said Ukrainian attacks cut power supplies to the city early Monday, but it was later restored using backup equipment.

Russia’s Yaroslavl regional Gov. Mikhail Yavrayev said two people were wounded in a Ukrainian drone attack on the city of the same name. He said over 70 Ukrainian drones were downed as they attacked the city. Yavrayev didn’t say if any facilities were damaged, but Astra online news outlet said the attack targeted an oil refinery in the city, causing a fire.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said that air defences downed 519 Ukrainian drones overnight.