A Kyiv air defence shortage left the Ukrainian capital unable to stop a wave of Russian ballistic missiles overnight, killing at least 13 people and damaging apartment blocks, warehouses, a children’s hospital and a school, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine said.
The attack began around midnight local time as air raid sirens sounded across the city, followed by the impact of around 20 Russian missiles. Strikes cut power to thousands of properties, plunging parts of the Kyiv region into darkness. A day of mourning was declared for Friday.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia used 168 drones and 44 missiles in the attack, mainly targeting Kyiv, and that air defences shot down 146 drones and 39 cruise missiles. An update released by the Ukrainian Air Force on Thursday morning implied that none of the Russian ballistic missiles used overnight were intercepted. The Russian defence ministry said it used air, land and sea-based weapons to target military facilities and warehouses.
Kyiv air defence shortage blamed for deaths
President Volodymyr Zelensky said the deaths were the direct result of a shortage of air defence missiles. Writing on Telegram, he said: ‘As long as Ukraine does not have enough anti-ballistics, Russia will not seriously think about peace.’ He added: ‘The interceptors for the Patriots have not yet been replaced, and they are needed every day. Each additional missile saves the lives of our people.’
Mayor Vitali Klitschko, speaking to BBC News at a wrecked apartment block in the Solomianskyi district, said Ukraine needed ‘ammunition, anti-missile systems, we need support from our partners’. As he met residents whose flats had been destroyed, he said it was ‘very important to have support from our partners’.
Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Goncharenko told the BBC that Ukraine is ‘absolutely unprotected’ from ballistic missile attacks and ‘can’t do anything’ without interceptors. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: ‘Russia is using this trying to destroy as much infrastructure as possible. For us it’s very painful because we are dying here every day without these interceptors.’
According to the Wall Street Journal, Ukraine was unable to intercept any of the 23 Russian ballistic missiles that crashed into the Kyiv area during the attack, underscoring how exposed the capital has become.
US Patriot stockpile stretched by Middle East conflict
Ukraine has relied on American supplies of Patriot interceptor missiles to combat Russian ballistic missiles, but the US has used much of its stockpile during the war in the Middle East and has been supplying Ukraine with less. The scale of the problem runs deeper than Ukraine alone: The Guardian reported that the United States now holds only about 25% of the Patriot missile interceptors it needs for all of the Pentagon’s military plans, after burning through stockpiles in recent months.
Production has been ramped up but cannot keep pace with demand in the near term. Before the war in Ukraine, the US was producing about 300 Patriot interceptors a year. Output has since risen to about 600, with efforts under way to reach 2,000 a year, but RFE/RL reported that target will not be reached until at least 2030.
In Kyiv’s Solomianskyi district, Larysa Bondaruk, 60, was placed in an emergency triage area with her cat and her belongings while emergency workers cleared rubble. Glass and debris continued to fall from the wreckage of residential buildings into the early hours of Thursday morning.
Elsewhere in the broader Kyiv region, an attack in the Brovary and Boryspil districts killed one man and wounded seven. One person was killed and 11 injured in Donetsk Oblast, a local official said.
In Russia, the defence ministry said 726 Ukrainian drones had been shot down after being launched at various regions across the country. Romania’s defence ministry said a drone crossed into its territory at the northern border with Ukraine, triggering an air alert siren before crashing into an uninhabited area. The Polish military said it had launched ‘defensive air operations’ to protect its airspace.
Zelensky’s renewed plea for interceptors came as he faced a political challenge at home. Ex-defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov has called for an election and launched a scathing attack on the government, claiming corruption has deprived the military of weapons.
Ukraine’s defence ministry also said the latest strikes meant that seven out of 10 of the logistics centres belonging to the Russian online retailer Wildberries had been ‘disabled’. Russia first launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and currently controls about one-fifth of Ukrainian territory, largely concentrated in the eastern border regions. With Patriot interceptor production not expected to reach the 2,000-per-year target until at least 2030, the Kyiv air defence shortage is set to persist for years.
