KYIV: Russian missile and drone strikes on Kyiv and the surrounding region killed at least 15 people and wounded 42 others overnight into Wednesday, Ukraine's state emergency service said.
The attack was the latest in a series of large-scale Russian ballistic missile strikes that have become near-routine this summer. Ukraine has a limited stockpile of interceptor missiles for the U.S.-made Patriot systems, the sole air defense system in its arsenal able to shoot down ballistic missiles, making large volleys like Wednesday’s hard to stop, even as Ukraine has stepped up deep strikes on Russian oil refineries and energy infrastructure.
In the wider Kyiv region around the capital, 14 people were killed and 27 wounded, with fires at multiple locations in Brovary, Bucha and Fastiv districts, Ukraine’s emergence service said. Large warehouse fires burned in the city of Brovary and the villages of Velyka Dymerka, Kvitneve and Peremoha. A fire involving vehicles at an enterprise in Fastiv district was extinguished. In Bucha district, crews battled a warehouse fire in the village of Chaiky after putting out a separate fire at a logistics facility in Sofiivska Borshchahivka.
In the capital, one person was killed and 15 were wounded, and emergency crews extinguished all fires sparked by the strikes in the Obolonskyi, Sviatoshynskyi, Holosiivskyi and Desnianskyi districts, the Kyiv City Military Administration said.
Serhii Beskrestnov, an adviser to Ukraine’s president on defense technology development, said the war of attrition has entered a new phase. “The enemy is attacking everything indiscriminately — retail warehouses, food storage facilities, logistics hubs, enterprises, building materials warehouses,” he said on Facebook.