KYIV, Ukraine — Russia launched an intense barrage of ballistic missiles and drones overnight into Saturday, killing at least nine people and wounding 33 civilians in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, authorities said. The strikes follow a major Russian attack two days earlier that killed at least 10 people and wounded more than 50 others across Ukraine, as Moscow apparently looks to exploit Kyiv’s critical shortage of Western-supplied anti-ballistic missile defences. The relentless cycle of attacks dims the potential of reaching a diplomatic end to Russia’s more than 4-year-old invasion of its neighbour. Deaths and damage across Kyiv A five-story residential building in the city’s Solomianskyi District was damaged by falling debris and a fire broke out. Rescue workers evacuated 35 people from the upper floors of the building and two people died, with eight reported injured, including two children, according to Ukraine’s state emergency service. In the Darnytskyi District of Kyiv, seven people were killed and another 14 injured after the attack caused fires and damage to houses, vehicles, an administrative and non-residential building, the emergency services said. Elsewhere, emergency workers extinguished a fire in a non-residential building in the capital’s Shevchenkivskyi district. There was no additional information about earlier reports by the district mayor that people were trapped in another residential building. Damage to commercial and residential buildings was reported in two other city districts. Lithuania’s foreign minister said the country’s embassy in Kyiv was damaged when missiles struck nearby overnight. Russia’s defence ministry said Saturday it had launched a “massive strike” against “Ukrainian military-industrial complex facilities and logistics centres in Kyiv.” Zelenskyy presses for more air defence President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pressed the United States and other Western partners over Ukraine’s need for more Patriot anti-ballistic missile defence systems to counter missile attacks from Russia. “Every package of ballistic missile interceptors saves the lives of our people. And every night without them results in more casualties,” he wrote on X following the latest attacks. The Ukrainian leader late Friday said he spoke to U.S. Vice President JD Vance and discussed a meeting with President Donald Trump earlier this week in Washington, which Zelenskyy described as “positive and productive.” “The Russian air strikes on our country continue and air defence, specifically interceptors for Patriot systems against ballistic missiles, remains a top priority,” Zelenskyy said Friday in a post on Telegram. At a NATO summit in Ankara in July, Trump said the U.S. would give Ukraine a license to make Patriot systems, but he appeared to move away from that commitment on Friday during a Cabinet meeting at the presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland, saying he had not yet made a final decision on the matter. Resident describes more frequent attacks From a basement shelter where she was taking cover as a second air alarm sounded for another wave, Liudmyla Nakonechna, 64, described how she was woken by loud explosions at 1:30 a.m. “I ran into the corridor and was standing there when the bathroom door was blown off its hinges and struck me in the leg,” said Nakonechna, whose health is poor after undergoing cancer treatment. “I heard the sound of shattering glass. My balcony was covered in glass and it was completely blown apart, while the windows in my bedroom were also blown out.” Nakonechna had not taken cover in a shelter since Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, but the stress became too much, she said. “It’s getting worse by the day,” Nakonechna said. “Whereas before there was an attack once every two weeks, or maybe once a week, now it happens practically every day. It is incredibly hard to bear this psychologically.” In other developments In Russian-occupied Crimea, the Moscow-appointed head of the city of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said Saturday that a 60-year-old woman was killed and two other people wounded in a drone attack on the city. Ukrainian drones struck three Russian oil refineries overnight in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan, Zelenskyy said Saturday. The refineries “process millions of tons of oil each year” and are located nearly 1,600 kilometres (994 miles) from Ukraine, Zelenskyy said on social media. The Russian online news outlet Astra reported Saturday that a Ukrainian drone set an oil refinery in Ufa, the capital of Bashkortostan, ablaze. Local officials said debris from a downed drone caused “smoke” at an unnamed “industrial zone.” Ukraine’s almost daily long-range drone and missile strikes using domestically developed weapons have battered Russian oil facilities for months. The operation has brought a fuel crisis that is embarrassing the Kremlin more than four years after Russia’s all-out invasion of its neighbour. A sanctioned Russian container ship, the Yanina, sank in the Black Sea after being hit by Ukrainian drones, Zelenskyy said Saturday, listing the ship as among “facilities that sustain the war effort.” Russia’s state nuclear energy company, Rosatom, whose shipping subsidiary FESCO operates the vessel, said the ship was carrying “civilian goods” such as frozen food and construction materials. Vasilisa Stepanenko, The Associated Press
