Russian Missile And Drone Attack On Ukraine’s Capital Kills At Least 18

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia launched waves of missiles and drones into Ukraine early Monday, killing at least 18 people in the attack that exposed widening gaps in the country’s air defenses, officials said.

All ballistic missiles launched by Russia hit their targets; this underlined Kiev’s need for more Patriot interceptor missiles; It’s a point Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will likely reiterate at this week’s NATO summit in Ankara, Türkiye.

According to local officials, 12 people died in the capital Kiev, Russia’s main target. Six more people were killed in the wider Kiev area, the group’s president, Mykola Kalashnyk, said.

According to Zelenskyy, at least 60 people were injured as emergency workers combed through rubble looking for survivors in residential high-rises in two areas of the capital that received direct hits.

A few days ago, on Thursday, 31 people died in a Russian attack in Kiev; It was the deadliest attack for the capital this year. The Russian Defense Ministry said the bombing was in retaliation for recent long-range attacks by Ukraine. fuel shortage and pressured President Vladimir Putin.

More than four years have passed since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine. Advances in drone technology gave him an advantage Analysts and Western officials have been saying so in recent months. They say attacks on supply routes behind the front line make the Russian army lose momentum on the battlefield, slow its advance and increase costs.

But Russia is now taking advantage of a different momentum: weaknesses in Ukraine’s air defenses, which rely heavily on U.S. Patriot systems to intercept ballistic missiles that it can otherwise rarely shoot down. The war in the Middle East strained the global supply of Patriot interceptors, which were already produced in limited numbers; This deficiency is currently felt most in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s air force said Russia fired 351 drones and 68 missiles throughout the night, mainly targeting Kiev, and all 29 ballistic missiles hit their targets.

“We need intervention vehicles to intervene in ballistics,” air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said on national television. “The Russians are certainly exploiting the fact that there is a serious shortage of interceptor missiles in Ukraine and around the world right now.”

Ahead of the NATO summit in Ankara, Zelenskyy said in X that Ukrainian forces performed well against drones and cruise missiles, but not against Russian ballistic missiles. He called on US and European partners to leave the summit with strong resolutions to strengthen Ukraine’s air defenses and protect civilian lives.

“As long as Patriot missiles remain in our allies’ stockpiles, Russia is only encouraged to ‘destroy’ residential buildings. The United States and Europe have enough power to stop this terrorism,” he said in a statement after the attack.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said Russia was deliberately increasing its ballistic missile attacks on an unprecedented scale and exploiting the serious shortage of Patriot interceptors. “Each month, fewer such missiles are produced around the world than the enemy fires on Ukraine in the same period,” he said.

The Russian Defense Ministry said the attack targeted weapons factories in Kiev, including facilities it said produced unmanned aerial vehicles, naval drones, armored vehicles and missiles, as well as facilities in and around the city that repair air defense systems and fuel and energy infrastructure. The allegations could not be independently verified.

Russian air strikes against Ukraine have repeatedly hit civilian areas. More than 16,000 Ukrainian civilians were killed in the war, according to the United Nations.

“These are residential buildings. Places where people sleep and live their ordinary lives,” Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kiev Military Administration, said in a post on Telegram.

He said a residential building in the Podilskyi district partially collapsed. Many multi-storey buildings were damaged in the Darnytsia area and people are believed to be trapped under rubble.

About 600 residents of the Kiev suburb of Vyshneve were evacuated due to the risk of unexploded ordnance, Ukraine’s Emergency Service said.

20-year-old Khrystyna Piatetska, who lives in the Darnytskyi district of Kiev, said that she started screaming after the first attack, which was followed by a second explosion that blew out the windows of the apartment.

The lights went out, the smell of burning filled the air and the stairwell was filled with smoke, he said.

“When we left the building, the bodies were lying there,” Piatetska said. “When we got down, the cars started exploding and we went out from under the rubble and right into the fire.”

61-year-old Halina Ivanivna said that she woke up at around 02:00 at night with the sound of the first attack. After a few minutes, the apartment building around him began to collapse. “Everything was falling,” he said. Water poured into the building as smoke filled the air as emergency crews tried to evacuate residents.

He said a second attack occurred about five minutes after the first collision.

Meanwhile, an energy provider Crimea occupied by Russia He reported that there was a power outage on the peninsula due to “external influence”. Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Moscow-appointed head of Sevastopol, said Ukrainian attacks knocked out electricity supplies to the city early on Monday, but they were later restored using backup equipment.

Governor of Russia’s Yaroslavl region, Mikhail Yavrayev, said that two people were injured in the Ukrainian drone attack on the city of the same name. More than 70 Ukrainian planes were shot down, the official said. Yavrayev did not say whether any facilities were damaged, but online news outlet Astra said the attack targeted an oil refinery, causing a fire.

The Russian Defense Ministry said its air defense shot down 519 Ukrainian drones overnight.

___ Associated Press writers Volodymyr Yurchuk in Kiev, Ukraine, and Susie Blann in London contributed to this report.

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