Russian missile and drone strikes killed at least 17 people and wounded dozens more in Kyiv and the surrounding region overnight.
Kyiv was unable to shoot down any of the missiles launched by Russia, whose intensifying attacks have prompted Kyiv to plead for more US-made Patriot interceptors.
Russia has significantly upped its attacks on the Ukrainian capital in recent months, typically firing salvos of hard-to-intercept ballistic missiles in short blitzes.
Announcing the death toll, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy referenced US President Donald Trump’s delayed decision on providing Ukraine with licences to make its own Patriot missiles by saying: “Ballistic interceptors are what could have saved the lives of those killed today.”
Later, Zelenskyy said he had been in talks with Nato chief Mark Rutte about getting interceptor missiles. He said: “It is important to cut through all red tape and make the necessary political decisions.
“Literally every day, people’s lives here in Ukraine depend on the resolve of our partners in Europe and the United States.”
More than 40 people were wounded in the capital and its surrounding areas, local authorities said.
Kyiv resident Natalia Reutska told AFP: “The night was so terrifying, so hard. We’ve gotten used to waking up thinking, ‘we were lucky today’, and that’s very scary.”
Ukraine shot down 98 of the 115 drones fired by Russia overnight, the air force said. But it was unable to shoot down any of the missiles, preliminary statistics from the air force showed.
EU chief Ursula von der Leyen slammed the attack as “horrible atrocities”, and French President Emmanuel Macron called for heavier sanctions against Russia.
Kyiv can intercept the vast majority of drones, but still relies on supplies from allies to counter missiles.
Zelenskyy said the number of air-defence missiles supplied from allies had dropped threefold compared with 2025.
He has repeatedly warned about critical air-defence shortages, as Moscow fired a record number of missiles at Ukraine in July.
There has been an uptick in civilian deaths in the conflict throughout 2026, the United Nations has reported, as the four-and-a-half-year war grinds on with no sign of a peace deal.
In Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, a key target for the Kremlin, local authorities on Wednesday ordered hundreds of families with children to leave the major Ukrainian-held city of Kramatorsk.
The Russian attacks overnight mainly targeted warehouses, Kyiv said, with some strikes on infrastructure and a railway station.
Eight people were killed in a strike on a train station on the eastern edge of Kyiv.
Logistics centres of the general merchandise chain Epicentr were struck, burning one hub completely to the ground and killing an employee, the company said.
Three people working at a postal sorting centre were also killed, and online retailer Rozetka also said it suffered its third attack this week.
Moscow said it hit “transportation, logistics, and distribution centres” in and around Kyiv “involved in the storage, delivering various weapons and military cargo, as well as in the production and distribution of unmanned aerial vehicles”.
Ukraine has hit the network of Russian online retailer Wildberries around a dozen times since mid-July, killing at least eight people and knocking out a large chunk of the company’s storage capacity.
Kyiv accuses the e-commerce giant - which employs tens of thousands of people and is sometimes referred to as “Russia’s Amazon” - of storing drone parts and helping the Russian army.
Both Kyiv and Moscow deny specifically targeting civilians in their attacks.
- AFP