KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia launched waves of missiles and drones at Ukraine early Monday, killing at least 18 people in an attack that exposed widening gaps in country’s air defenses, authorities said.
All of the ballistic missiles launched by Russia struck their targets, underscoring Kyiv’s need for more Patriot interceptor missiles — a point Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will likely reiterate at a NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, this week.
Twelve people were killed in the capital, Kyiv, which was Russia's main target, according to local officials. Another six people were killed in the wider Kyiv region, said its head Mykola Kalashnyk.
At least 60 people were wounded, according to Zelenskyy, as emergency workers combed through rubble looking for survivors at residential high-rises in two locations that suffered direct hits in the capital.
Days earlier, on Thursday, a Russian strike killed 31 people in Kyiv, the deadliest for the capital this year. Russia’s Defense Ministry said the bombardment was retaliation for Ukraine’s recent long-range strikes, which have caused severe and pressured President Vladimir Putin.
More than four years after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbor, Ukraine’s in recent months, analysts and Western officials say. Strikes on supply routes behind the front line have stripped the Russian army of momentum on the battlefield, they say, slowing its advance and driving up the cost.
But Russia is now exploiting a different kind of momentum: vulnerabilities in Ukraine’s air defenses, 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 — a shortage now most of all being felt in Ukraine.
Gaps in Ukraine's air defense
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 Ankara, Zelenskyy 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 defense 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 Defense 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.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said the attack targeted weapons factories in Kyiv, including sites it said produce drones, sea drones, armored vehicles and missiles, as well as facilities repairing air defense 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 Military Administration, 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 trapped under 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, 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, 61, 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.
About five minutes after the initial impact, a second strike hit, she said.
Ukrainian attacks in Russia and occupied Crimea
Meanwhile, an energy provider in 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 region 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. Yavrayev didn’t say if any facilities were damaged, but Astra online news outlet said the attack targeted an oil refinery, causing a fire.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said that air defenses downed 519 Ukrainian drones overnight.
___ Associated Press writers Volodymyr Yurchuk in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Susie Blann in London contributed to this report.
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