Russian missile and drone barrage in Ukrainian capital region kills 17

Russian missile and drone barrage in Ukrainian capital region kills 17

The strikes mainly targeted warehouses belonging to civilian businesses

Russia unleashes deadly wave of missiles, drones on Kyiv

Russian missile and drone strikes on Kyiv and the surrounding region killed 17 people and wounded 44 others overnight into Wednesday, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

The attack was the latest in a series of large-scale Russian ballistic missile strikes that have become near-routine this summer. The intensified barrages are exploiting Ukraine's critical shortage of interceptor missiles for the U.S.-made Patriot systems, the sole air defence system in its arsenal able to shoot down ballistic missiles.

Zelenskyy has pleaded with other countries to send more of the ammunition made scarcer by the Iran war.

"Ballistic interceptors are what could have saved the lives of those killed today," Zelenskyy said on social media. "It is very important for our partners to understand that delays in supplying them, or a reluctance to hand over anti-ballistic systems, lead directly to such horrific casualties and destruction."

Russia fired 24 ballistic missiles, four other missiles identified as either hypersonic Zircons or supersonic Oniks, and 115 drones, many of them jet-powered, in the attack.

Zelenskyy said the strikes mainly targeted warehouses belonging to civilian businesses, as well as infrastructure and a railway station, hitting sites that he described as "with no connection to the war"— including a brewing company, building materials warehouses and civilian logistics facilities.

Serhii Beskrestnov, an adviser to Ukraine's president on defence 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.

Canadian-designed armour for women put to the test in Ukraine

Russia says it hit war-supporting companies

The Russian Defence Ministry said it struck transport, logistics and distribution centres involved in military activity. It listed four targets in Kyiv, claiming they ran war-related operations.

It was not immediately possible to reconcile the different accounts.

Ukraine's largest private postal operator, Nova Poshta, said a Russian cluster munition destroyed one of its sorting centres in Kyiv.

The Russian Defence Ministry said the centre was "storing and distributing dual-use goods, including those used in the production of long- and medium-range uncrewed aerial vehicles, as well as robotic systems and electronic warfare systems." It claimed that two other logistics centres in the Kyiv region stored drones or components for drones.

Separately, the ministry said its forces hit three bulk carriers on the Black Sea south of Odesa that it claimed were transporting weapons and military equipment for the Ukrainian armed forces. Ukrainian officials didn't comment on that claim.

One of the companies that came under heavy fire was the Epicentr, one of Ukraine's largest retail and construction chains. It said in a statement on Facebook that "in minutes, Russian missiles destroyed what the company had built over decades."

One employee was killed and three others were wounded. Russia hit two of the company's key logistics hubs.

According to the Russian Defence Ministry, the Epicentr site handled order processing, sorting, storing and delivery of dual-use goods and components for drone production.

Ukraine fires hundreds of drones

In its latest attack on logistics facilities of Wildberries, Russia's biggest online retailer, Ukrainian drones hit a warehouse in the Tula region south of Moscow, the company and the region's governor said Wednesday.

It was the 14th Wildberries warehouse to catch fire in less than three weeks, according to a Ukrainian tally. Ukraine says the company provides goods that can be used by the military. Kyiv is also keen to unsettle the Russian public with high-profile attacks.

Why attack 'Russia's Amazon'? | About That

The Russian Defence Ministry said its forces downed 475 Ukrainian drones overnight over 16 Russian regions, as well as illegally annexed Crimea and the waters of the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea.

U.S.-led peace efforts to end the war that began with Russia's invasion in February 2022 have apparently stalled. Trump, at a NATO summit in Turkey last month, teased a plan for Ukraine to produce missile systems with U.S. defence contractors, but no details have followed and such a plan wouldn't be of immediate help.