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A wave of Russian missiles and drones has struck across Ukraine, killing 21 people, and heavily damaging apartment blocks and other buildings, in an attack on the eve of a Nato summit in Turkey that has exposed widening gaps in Ukraine’s air defences.
Fifteen people were killed in Kyiv, Russia’s main target, and 56 others were injured in the attacks early on Monday, according to the city’s administrative head, Tymur Tkachenko.
Another six people were killed in the wider Kyiv region and 21 were injured, according to Mykola Kalashnyk, the head of the regional administration, and other emergency officials.
All of the ballistic missiles launched by Russia struck their targets, underscoring Kyiv’s need for more Patriot interceptor missiles – a point the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is expected to reiterate at the Nato summit, which starts on Tuesday.
Zelenskyy noted that while Ukrainian forces had achieved “success” countering the Russian drones and cruise missiles involved in the attack, they had not been able to shoot down the ballistic missiles because of the shortage of Patriot interceptors.
Zelenskyy called for “strong decisions” from the Nato summit. “As long as Patriot missiles remain in our allies’ stockpiles, Russia is only encouraged to keep ‘vanquishing’ residential buildings. The United States and Europe have enough strength to stop this terror,” he said in a statement.
He urged the US and European allies to leave the Nato summit in Ankara with “strong decisions” on strengthening Ukraine’s air defences, adding that until Patriot missiles sitting in the allied stockpiles only encouraged “Russia to keep ‘defeating’ residential buildings”.
At least 60 people were wounded, according to Zelenskyy, as emergency workers combed through rubble looking for survivors at residential high-rises in two locations that suffered direct hits in the capital.
The latest large-scale Russian attack came after the Kremlin confirmed on Monday that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump had agreed in a weekend call that they would talk again “in the near future”, suggesting they were likely to talk this week during or after the two-day Nato summit.
Trump is planning to meet Zelenskyy on Wednesday in Turkey where he will be attending the summit, a senior US official said on Sunday. The idea, the official said, was to make a renewed push to end the war in Ukraine.
The Russian defence ministry confirmed it used long-range weapons and drones to carry out a “massive” attack on Kyiv and other locations. In a Telegram post, the ministry said it had hit military and energy facilities in Kyiv and the surrounding area, as well as military airfields in several other regions.
The barrage came as Kyiv struck Russia’s most important refinery in the Omsk region, badly damaging a facility that also produces key chemicals needed for Russian refining processes, at a time of growing fuel shortages in the country.
The onslaught began shortly after 1am and lasted for hours, striking at least 15 multistorey residential buildings. “These are … places where people slept and lived their ordinary lives,” said Tkachenko.
In the historic Podilskyi district, four residential buildings were hit and a nine-storey block was largely destroyed from the fifth floor up, leaving survivors trapped. Rescuers used a ladder truck to reach them as firefighters continued to battle lingering flames.
From the sidelines of the rescue operation, Alyona, 22, told Reuters she was waiting for news of her friend Vika. “We’re sitting here and waiting until they retrieve them … she’s so kind, only 19 years old. She’s such a kind girl,” she said, holding back tears.
Across the city, rescuers continued to comb through rubble, including among the remains of a 21-storey residential block in Podilskyi, where they searched for survivors.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia had launched a combined attack involving ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, hypersonic Zircon anti-ship missiles and 351 attack and decoy drones overnight.
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Thirty-seven cruise missiles and 326 attack drones were shot down, but 23 ballistic missiles, six Zircon missiles and 18 drones evaded Ukrainian air defences and struck 34 locations across the country.
The attack also included the use of faster flying drones equipped with jets – a type that air defence teams have had more difficulty countering.
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said rescue crews were continuing to rescue residents from devastated buildings.
The overnight barrage came days after at least 31 people were killed in Russian strikes on the capital in the early hours of Thursday – the deadliest assault on the city this year – as both sides intensified their long-range attacks.
In Russia-annexed Crimea, its governor, Mikhail Razvozhayev, wrote on Telegram: “Following an enemy attack on energy infrastructure near Sevastopol, our city was temporarily left without electricity.”
In recent weeks, Ukraine has increasingly targeted energy facilities inside Russia and, in particular, Moscow-controlled territory in a push to weaken the Kremlin’s war effort.
Zelenskyy said on Sunday that troops were continuing to fight for the strategic eastern town of Kostyantynivka, a gateway to strategically important Ukrainian positions in the Donetsk region.
On Friday, Moscow said it had taken the outpost. However, Kyiv dismissed the announcement as a “lie”, saying that it was defending the town.
“Fighting is also continuing for Kostyantynivka, which [the Russian president Vladimir] Putin has already claimed as his own. But it is obvious that he will never dare to appear there,” Zelenskyy said in his daily evening address.
Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this story
