Russia Pounds Kyiv With 68 Missiles and 351 Drones, Killing at Least 22

Russia unleashed one of the heaviest bombardments of its more than four-year war against Ukraine overnight, firing 68 missiles and 351 drones and killing at least 22 people, most of them in and around the capital, Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said.

Of the missiles launched, 23 were ballistic — the fast, hard-to-intercept weapons that Ukraine's air defenses can rarely stop. Fifteen people were killed in Kyiv, the barrage's main target, and 56 were injured. In the city's Darnytsia district, several multistory apartment buildings were damaged and people were feared buried in the rubble, while about 600 residents were evacuated from the suburb of Vyshneve because of the risk from unexploded munitions.

The assault laid bare a widening gap in Ukraine's defenses. The country remains heavily dependent on U.S.-made Patriot systems to shoot down ballistic missiles, but those interceptors are in short supply worldwide — a scarcity now made worse by the war in the Middle East, which has drawn down global stockpiles. "To intercept ballistics, we need the means for interception," air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said. "Russians are certainly using the fact that there is a serious deficit."

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that the shortage was emboldening Moscow, saying that as long as Patriot missiles sat in allies' stockpiles rather than protecting Ukrainian cities, Russia was "only encouraged" to keep striking residential buildings. Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov underscored the imbalance bluntly: "Fewer such missiles are produced worldwide each month than the enemy fires at Ukraine in that same period."

Russia's Defense Ministry said the strikes were retaliation for recent Ukrainian long-range attacks and warned that expanded Western arms supplies "will not go unnoticed and will be countered by a corresponding increase in the number and power of retaliatory strikes." Moscow has intensified its aerial campaign against Kyiv in recent weeks, testing whether Ukraine's thinning defenses can hold.

The scale of the assault stood out even by the standards of a war grinding through its fifth year. Air-raid sirens wailed across Kyiv for hours as residents crowded into metro stations and basement shelters, and emergency crews worked through the morning to reach people trapped beneath collapsed floors. Ukrainian officials said the sheer volume of incoming fire — hundreds of drones launched alongside dozens of missiles in a single night — was designed to saturate and overwhelm defenses that can only track so many targets at once.

The timing was pointed. The barrage struck on the eve of President Trump's departure for a NATO summit in Ankara, where he was expected to press European allies to spend more on defense and to shore up support for Ukraine. For Kyiv's residents, huddled in metro stations and basements through another night of explosions, the political calendar offered little comfort against a sky full of drones and missiles.