KYIV, Ukraine — At least 22 people were killed as Russia launched a wave of missiles and drones at Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, officials said, hours before President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was set to plead for more firepower at a NATO summit in Turkey.
All of the ballistic missiles Russia launched struck their targets, underscoring Kyiv’s shortage of Patriot interceptor missiles. The attack came hours after Zelenskyy warned that a large-scale attack was imminent.
Damage was reported at more than 10 locations across the capital, including residential buildings, Zelenskyy said Monday on X, adding that the city had come under “a massive Russian attack.”
Later in his evening address to the nation, he said 22 people were killed and 90 were injured.
“This time again, Russia’s main targets were Kyiv and the region,” he said.
Zelenskyy spoke ahead of Tuesday’s NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey — which President Donald Trump is set to attend.
Hailing his country’s military efforts, he said it was struggling to intercept “Russian ballistic missiles. And the reason lies in the insufficient supply of interceptor missiles.”
Pleading for international help, he said it was “critically important that the world — first and foremost the United States and our European partners — come out of the NATO summit in Ankara with strong decisions in support of our air defense and thus the protection of ordinary people’s lives.”
“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 added.
The latest attack on Kyiv came just days after a Russian strike killed 31 people in the capital Thursday, the deadliest for the capital this year. Russia’s Defense Ministry said the bombardment was retaliation for Ukraine’s recent long-range strikes, which have caused severe fuel shortages and pressured President Vladimir Putin.
More than four years after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbor, Ukraine’s advances in drone technology have given it an edge in recent months, analysts and Western officials say. Strikes on supply routes behind the front line have stripped the Russian army of momentum on the battlefield, they say, slowing its advance and driving up the cost.
But Russia is now exploiting a different kind of momentum: vulnerabilities in Ukraine’s air defenses, which remain heavily reliant on the U.S. Patriot systems to intercept ballistic missiles they can rarely shoot down any other way. The war in the Middle East has strained the global supply of Patriot interceptors, already produced in limited numbers — a shortage now most of all being felt in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s air force said that Russia fired hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles at the country overnight, targeting mainly Kyiv, and that 29 ballistic missiles struck their targets, underscoring how little Ukraine can do to stop them.
“To intercept ballistics, we need the means for interception,” air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said on national television. “Russians are certainly using the fact that there is a serious deficit of interceptor missiles now in Ukraine and the world.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also said Monday that Ukraine urgently needed more air defense and pledged to discuss it in Ankara.
Accusing Russia of “blindly attacking civilians from the air,” she said Europe would “keep increasing the pressure until Russia ends the bloodshed.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry said the attack targeted weapons factories in Kyiv, including sites it said produce drones, sea drones, armored vehicles and missiles, as well as facilities that repair air defense systems and fuel and energy infrastructure in the city and the surrounding region. The claims could not be independently verified.
Zelenskyy appeals to U.S. after deadly Russian attacks
Russia’s aerial attacks have repeatedly hit civilian areas. More than 16,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the war, according to the United Nations.
“These are residential buildings. Places where people slept and lived their ordinary lives,” Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s City Military Administration, said on Telegram.
A residential building in the Podilskyi district partly collapsed, he said. In the Darnytsia district, several multistory buildings were damaged and people were believed to be trapped under the rubble.
Khrystyna Piatetska, 20, a resident of Kyiv’s Darnytskyi district, said she began screaming after the first strike, which was followed by a second blast that blew out the windows in her apartment building.
The lights went out, the smell of burning filled the air, and the stairwell was thick with smoke, she said.
“When we were leaving the building, bodies were lying there,” Piatetska said. “When we got downstairs, cars started exploding, and we came out from under the rubble straight into the fire.”
Halina Ivanivna, 61, of Kyiv, said she awoke to the sound of the first strike around 2 a.m. Moments later, her apartment building began to collapse around her.
“Everything was falling down,” she said. Water poured through the building as smoke filled the air while emergency crews rushed to evacuate residents.
About five minutes after the initial impact, a second strike hit, she said.
An NBC News producer in Kyiv saw a vast column of thick smoke rising into the sky from her window Monday morning. There were no cars on the streets or sounds of the city, she said, noting a stream of reports from local authorities confirming death and destruction.
Elsewhere, an energy provider in Russia-occupied Crimea reported a blackout across the peninsula due to “external impact.” The Moscow-appointed head of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said Ukrainian attacks cut power supplies to the city early Monday, but it was later restored using backup equipment.
Mikhail Yavrayev, governor of Russia’s Yaroslavl region, said two people were wounded in a Ukrainian drone attack on the city of Yaroslavl. He said over 70 Ukrainian drones were downed as they attacked the city. Yavrayev did not say whether any facilities were damaged; the online news outlet Astra said the attack targeted an oil refinery in the city, causing a fire.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said air defenses downed 519 Ukrainian drones overnight.
Daryna Mayer reported from Kyiv and Adela Suliman from London.
