Russian barrage in Ukraine's capital region kills 17 as air defenses fall short

Hanna Arhirova, Associated Press Hanna Arhirova, Associated Press KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian attacks on Kyiv and its surrounding region killed 17 people and wounded dozens, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday, as Ukraine's depleted air defenses failed to stop any of Moscow's incoming missiles overnight. The barrage, which lasted about two hours, was the latest in a series of large-scale Russian missile strikes that have become almost routine this summer. Moscow is exploiting Ukraine's critical shortage of interceptors for the U.S.-made Patriot systems, the sole air defense weapon in its arsenal able to shoot down ballistic missiles. Zelenskyy has pleaded with other countries, especially the U.S., to send more of the ammunition made scarcer by the Iran war. Failing that, he wants to make Patriot ammunition in Ukraine or win permission from Elon Musk to use his Starlink satellite communications system to guide strikes inside Russia that can hit its missile launchers.

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Scoop News DeskUkraine · Published Wednesday, August 5, 2026 at 9:20 PM UTCUpdated Wednesday, August 5, 2026 at 9:34 PM UTC

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Russia fired 24 ballistic missiles, four other missiles identified as either hypersonic Zircon or supersonic Onik cruise missiles, and 115 drones, many of them jet-powered and harder to stop due to their speed, Ukrainian authorities said. It was not immediately possible to independently reconcile the different Russian and Ukrainian accounts of the military value of the targets. Kyiv warehouse worker Mykhailo Hukov said an air raid warning that included a ballistic missile threat sounded just after midnight. "So everyone started running," he told The Associated Press. "I turned everyone around so they wouldn't go back inside for their backpacks." In an underground shelter minutes later, they heard "very loud explosions." Ukraine's largest private postal operator, Nova Poshta, said a Russian cluster munition destroyed one of its sorting centers in Kyiv.