Russia Unleashes One of War's Largest Barrages on Ukraine, Killing at Least 22

Russia launched one of the largest aerial assaults of its more than four-year war on Ukraine overnight, firing 73 missiles and 656 drones at cities across the country and killing at least 22 civilians, Ukrainian officials said Tuesday. The bombardment wounded more than 130 people, toppled an apartment building and plunged tens of thousands of homes into darkness.

The deadliest blow fell on Dnipro, where at least nine people were killed, including a child, when a four-story residential building collapsed under the impact. In the capital, Kyiv, four people died and at least 58 were wounded, two of them children, while roughly 140,000 residents lost electricity. In Kharkiv, 10 people were hurt, among them another child. Damage was reported across eight districts of Kyiv, where rescue crews dug through rubble into the morning.

Ukraine's air force said it intercepted or suppressed 602 of the drones and 40 of the missiles, but acknowledged that 38 sites were struck — a grim illustration of how Russia's mass-launch tactics can overwhelm even an effective defense. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it "a brutal strike" and warned that the country can no longer shield its skies. "The current level of supplies for our air defense does not allow us to shoot down a significant share of the missiles," he said, renewing his appeal for U.S. Patriot systems and accelerated European production.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko described a "mass enemy attack" on the capital, while Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga lashed out at the Kremlin. "Putin is a war criminal and loser who has no cards except terror," he said. Zelenskyy had warned allies on Friday that Moscow was preparing a "massive new strike," a forecast that proved tragically accurate within days.

The barrage landed at a precarious moment for Ukraine's defenses. Officials and Western analysts have warned that Kyiv's stockpile of interceptors has been stretched thin, in part because U.S. air-defense munitions have been diverted to the Middle East amid the spiraling conflict with Iran. With Russia escalating its long-range campaign and Ukraine's protective umbrella thinning, Zelenskyy framed the attack as a deliberate message from Moscow: that without stronger defenses, the strikes on Ukrainian cities will only intensify.

The barrage also landed against a backdrop of stalled diplomacy. Months of on-again, off-again efforts to broker a ceasefire have failed to halt the fighting, even as the Trump administration's attention and munitions have been pulled toward the war with Iran. Russia has pounded Ukrainian cities with missiles and drones on a near-daily basis since launching its full-scale invasion in February 2022, but the scale of the latest assault — among the largest single-night attacks of the war — underscored how sharply the Kremlin has chosen to escalate rather than negotiate. European officials, who have pledged to ramp up their own production of interceptors and air-defense systems, warned that Ukraine's cities would remain dangerously exposed through the summer unless deliveries accelerate.