Russian strikes kill 16 in Kyiv, Zelenskiy says lack of Patriot interceptors costs lives
KYIV, Aug 20 (Reuters) — A Russian barrage of cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and drones killed at least 16 people and wounded more than 40 in Kyiv and its suburbs on Thursday, Ukrainian officials said, as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that delays in providing Patriot interceptor missiles were making the war more deadly.
The Ukrainian air force said Russia fired dozens of cruise missiles, as well as ballistic and hypersonic missiles, and 168 drones in the overnight attack. Ukrainian forces downed nearly 90 percent of the drones and most of the cruise missiles, the air force said. It did not say how many ballistic missiles were launched or whether any were intercepted.
Zelenskiy called Thursday’s strike one of the most “cynical, calculated, and large-scale” attacks of the four-and-a-half-year war. In Kyiv, the upper floors of a nine-story residential block were destroyed in the Solomianskyi district, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said, and he called for Friday to be observed as a day of mourning. He said 30 residential buildings, a school, a children’s hospital and a kindergarten were damaged in the capital and surrounding areas.
Private energy company DTEK said power had been restored to about 90,000 households after the attack. Ukrainian Prime Minister Sergii Koretskyi said the assault lasted nearly nine hours and damaged food warehouses and Red Cross facilities around Kyiv. Russia’s Defense Ministry said the strikes had hit a plant producing drone components, a military depot and a logistics hub in and around the capital, along with other targets.
Air-defense gap
The attack also targeted a border crossing with Moldova in the Black Sea region of Odesa, where repeated Russian strikes on ports and ships have all but halted Ukraine’s vital agricultural exports in recent weeks and put renewed pressure on global food prices.
As Moscow has stepped up ballistic strikes, Zelenskiy has repeatedly appealed to allies to replenish Ukraine’s stock of Patriot interceptors, the only weapon in its arsenal that can shoot down ballistic missiles. “The interceptors for Patriot systems have not yet been replaced, and they are needed every day,” he wrote on Telegram. “Each additional missile saves the lives of our people.”
He said Russia would not seriously negotiate for peace as long as Ukraine lacked the missile defenses needed to protect its cities. U.S.-mediated talks stalled earlier this year after Kyiv refused Russian demands to give up more territory. “The world’s response to such attacks is not always adequate,” he said.
Responding to Zelenskiy, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on X that she was working with member states and partners to provide Ukraine with anti-ballistic capabilities “as the most urgent of priorities.”
Grief in the capital
At the damaged apartment block in Solomianskyi, an elderly woman wailed as rescue workers carried out her grandson’s body, television footage showed. She stood sobbing beside him after he was placed on the ground, before medics moved in to support her.
Most of the dead were in Kyiv, with one person killed in the surrounding region, an official said on Telegram. In recent weeks, fresh fruit and vegetables have occasionally disappeared from supermarket shelves in the capital because of strikes on food logistics depots.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has stepped up its own strikes inside Russia, targeting oil facilities and logistics infrastructure to undermine Moscow’s ability to fight. Overnight, authorities in Russia’s Tatarstan region, about 1,000 km (620 miles) east of Moscow, reported a disruption at an industrial complex in Nizhnekamsk following a Ukrainian drone attack and said some residential apartments were damaged. Ukraine’s military said it hit the TANECO oil refinery and an oil terminal in the Krasnodar region.
During the Russian attack on Ukraine, a drone crashed into Romania, a NATO and European Union member state, the Romanian defense ministry said. A separate drone came down on Moldovan territory, President Maia Sandu said.
Zelenskiy said this month that Ukraine had handed peace proposals to U.S. negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. The Kremlin said on Thursday it had no information yet on a possible visit to Moscow by the two Americans, who were last in the Russian capital in January and have not yet visited Kyiv. One source familiar with the discussions said no date had been confirmed for a proposed trip to Ukraine.
Thursday’s attack underscored the dilemma at the center of the war: Russia still has the ability to inflict devastating, wide-area damage on Ukrainian cities, and Ukraine’s best defense remains in critically short supply.