Russia launched one of its largest combined missile and drone attacks on Ukraine early Monday, killing at least 18 people and injuring around 60, in a barrage that Ukrainian officials said exposed critical gaps in the country’s air defences due to a shortage of Patriot interceptor missiles.Ukraine’s Air Force said Russia fired 351 drones and 68 missiles, mainly targeting Kyiv. It said all 29 ballistic missiles launched during the attack struck their targets, underlining Ukraine’s inability to intercept them without additional Patriot systems.The capital Kyiv bore the brunt of the assault, with 12 people killed, according to local authorities. Another six people died in the surrounding Kyiv region, regional governor Mykola Kalashnyk said. Emergency workers continued searching the rubble of residential buildings for survivors after direct strikes hit apartment blocks in two parts of the city.The attack came just days after a Russian strike killed 31 people in Kyiv, the deadliest assault on the capital this year. Russia’s Defence Ministry said Monday’s bombardment targeted weapons factories, drone production facilities, air defence repair sites and fuel infrastructure in Kyiv and the surrounding region, although those claims could not be independently verified.Ahead of this week’s NATO summit in Ankara, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy renewed his appeal for more Patriot interceptor missiles, saying Ukraine had managed to defend itself against drones and cruise missiles but remained vulnerable to Russian ballistic missiles.“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.Ukraine’s Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said the shortage of interceptor missiles had become a critical challenge.“To intercept ballistics, we need the means for interception,” 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.”Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said Russia was deliberately increasing the scale of its ballistic missile attacks to exploit the shortage.“Fewer such missiles are produced worldwide each month than the enemy fires at Ukraine in that same period,” he said.Russia’s aerial attacks have repeatedly struck civilian areas during the war. According to the United Nations, more than 16,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.“These are residential buildings. Places where people slept and lived their ordinary lives,” said Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s Military Administration.Authorities said a residential building partially collapsed in Kyiv’s Podilskyi district, while several apartment blocks were damaged in the Darnytsia district, where people were believed to be trapped beneath the rubble. Around 600 residents were evacuated from the Kyiv suburb of Vyshneve because of the risk posed by unexploded ordnance.Residents described scenes of panic as the missiles struck.“When we were leaving the building, bodies were lying there,” said 20-year-old Khrystyna Piatetska. “When we got downstairs, cars started exploding, and we came out from under the rubble straight into the fire.”Another resident, 61-year-old Halina Ivanivna, said she woke to the sound of explosions around 2 am.“Everything was falling down,” she said, describing how her apartment building began collapsing before a second strike followed minutes later.Meanwhile, authorities in Russian-occupied Crimea reported widespread power outages following what they described as an “external impact”. Moscow-appointed officials said electricity was later restored using backup systems.Russia’s Yaroslavl region also came under a Ukrainian drone attack, with Governor Mikhail Yavrayev saying two people were wounded and more than 70 Ukrainian drones were shot down. Russia’s Defence Ministry said its air defences intercepted 519 Ukrainian drones overnight.
