KYIV, Ukraine\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Russia unleashed waves of missiles and drones at Ukraine early Monday, killing at least 22 people in attacks that exposed widening gaps in the country\u2019s air defenses more than four years into Moscow\u2019s full-scale invasion, authorities said.<\/p>\n
All of the ballistic missiles launched by Russia struck their targets, underscoring Kyiv\u2019s need for more U.S.-made Patriot interceptor missiles \u2014 a point Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will probably reiterate at a NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, this week.<\/p>\n
Fifteen people were killed in the capital, Kyiv, which was Russia\u2019s main target, and 56 were injured, according to administrative head Tymur Tkachenko. An additional seven people were killed in the wider Kyiv region and 29 were injured, according to Ukraine\u2019s emergency service.<\/p>\n
Emergency workers searched for survivors in the rubble of residential high-rises in two locations that suffered direct hits.<\/p>\n
Moscow has stepped up attacks on Kyiv in retaliation for Ukraine\u2019s recent long-range strikes, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. Those Ukrainian attacks have caused severe fuel shortages and put pressure on President Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, a Russian strike killed 31 people in Kyiv, the deadliest attack in the capital this year.<\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
But Russia now is exploiting vulnerabilities in Ukraine\u2019s air defenses, 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 \u2014 a shortage now felt keenly in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Zelensky notes gaps in stopping ballistic missiles<\/b><\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s air force said Russia fired 351 drones and 68 missiles overnight, targeting mainly Kyiv, and all 29 ballistic missiles struck their targets.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo intercept ballistics, we need the means for interception,\u201d air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said on national television. \u201cRussians are certainly using the fact that there is a serious deficit of interceptor missiles now, in Ukraine and the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ahead of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Turkey, Zelensky said Ukrainian forces had performed well against drones and cruise missiles but not against ballistic missiles \u2014 a shortfall he blamed on insufficient supplies of interceptors. He urged U.S. and European partners at the summit to bolster Ukraine\u2019s air defense and protect civilians.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs long as Patriot missiles remain in our allies\u2019 stockpiles, Russia is only encouraged to keep \u2018vanquishing\u2019 residential buildings. The United States and Europe have enough strength to stop this terror,\u201d he said on X following the attack.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s Defense Ministry said any increase in the supply of drones, missiles and ammunition produced in the West \u201cwill not go unnoticed and will be countered by a corresponding increase in the number and power of retaliatory strikes by the Russian armed forces on Ukrainian territory.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said Russia is deliberately ramping up ballistic missile attacks on a scale unseen before, exploiting the acute shortage of Patriot interceptors. \u201cFewer such missiles are produced worldwide each month than the enemy fires at Ukraine in that same period,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s Defense Ministry said the attack in Kyiv targeted weapons factories, 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.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s attacks have repeatedly hit civilian areas. More than 16,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the war, according to the United Nations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are residential buildings. Places where people slept and lived their ordinary lives,\u201d Tkachenko said in a post on Telegram.<\/p>\n
A residential building in the Podilskyi district partially collapsed, he said. In the Darnytskyi district, several multistory buildings were damaged and people were believed to be buried in the rubble.<\/p>\n
In Kyiv\u2019s suburb of Vyshneve, about 600 residents were evacuated because of the risk of unexploded munitions, Ukraine\u2019s Emergency Service said.<\/p>\n
Witnesses recount their harrowing escapes<\/b><\/p>\n
Khrystyna Piatetska, 20, a resident of Kyiv\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
The lights went out, a burning smell filled the air and the stairwell was thick with smoke, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we were leaving the building, bodies were lying there,\u201d Piatetska said. \u201cWhen we got downstairs, cars started exploding, and we came out from under the rubble straight into the fire.\u201d<\/p>\n
Halina Ivanivna, 61, said she was awakened by the first strike about 2 a.m. Moments later, her apartment building began collapsing around her.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything was falling down,\u201d she said. Water poured through the building as smoke filled the air while emergency crews rushed to evacuate residents.<\/p>\n
About five minutes after the initial impact, a second strike hit, she said.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian strikes reach from Russian-held Crimea to Siberia<\/b><\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s Defense Ministry said its air defenses downed 613 of 625 Ukrainian drones overnight.<\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s military said its Special Operations Forces struck the Omsk oil refinery in western Siberia, nearly 1,550 miles from Ukraine\u2019s border. That appeared to be the farthest oil refinery in Russia\u2019s east that Ukraine has ever struck, and added to a long list of key refineries hit in recent months.<\/p>\n
Omsk regional Gov. Vitaly Khotsenko confirmed a Ukrainian attack on the refinery in a Telegram post but provided no details, saying only that \u201cmost of the drones\u201d targeting the facility were destroyed and that there were no casualties.<\/p>\n
The Omsk refinery is Russia\u2019s largest, boasting a capacity of around 460,000 barrels a day, said Gary Peach, oil markets analyst at Energy Intelligence. As of the end of June, it was producing close to capacity, accounting for 12% of all Russian refining output, Peach said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDepending on the extent of the damage, a sustained outage of even part of Omsk\u2019s capacity will exacerbate Russia\u2019s woes on the domestic fuel market and make the need to find import replacements even more urgent,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Russia has been grappling with a widespread fuel crisis from Ukraine\u2019s repeated strikes on refineries and other infrastructure in the country. Gasoline shortages and fuel rationing have been reported in multiple regions, with drivers waiting hours to fill their tanks.<\/p>\n
In Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, an energy provider reported a blackout across the peninsula after 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.<\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s military confirmed that it struck several Russian energy and military facilities used to supply Russia\u2019s armed forces with fuel and support its war efforts.<\/p>\n
In the Russian city of Yaroslavl, two people were wounded in an attack in which more than 70 Ukrainian drones were downed, according to regional Gov. Mikhail Yevrayev. He didn\u2019t say if any facilities were damaged, but the Astra online news outlet said the attack caused a fire at an oil refinery.<\/p>\n
A 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.<\/p>\n
Arhirova, Kullab and Novikov write for the Associated Press. AP writers Volodymyr Yurchuk in Kyiv, David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany, and Susie Blann in London contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KYIV, Ukraine\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Russia unleashed waves of missiles and drones at Ukraine early Monday, killing at least 22 people in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1072711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7654],"tags":[2594,208297,11413,209130,31239,41264,2000,299,10546,7466,2301,32949,457,20401,116045,332,657,294036],"class_list":["post-1072710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ukraine","tag-air-defense","tag-apartment-building","tag-attack","tag-ballistic-missile","tag-drone","tag-drone-attack","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-kyiv","tag-missile","tag-moscow","tag-nato-summit","tag-people","tag-recent-month","tag-residential-building","tag-russia","tag-ukraine","tag-ukraine-kill"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116875037608576086","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1072710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1072711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1072710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1072710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1072710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}