Calls for US to help as Russia launches new wave of strikes
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has asked Donald Trump to send Patriot missiles to Ukraine after a devastating Russian attack killed at least 18 people and injured dozens more.
Russia launched 73 missiles and 656 drones at Ukraine overnight, according to the air force, including eight hypersonic Tsirkon missiles. The main targets were Kyiv, the central cities of Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia, and the eastern cities of Poltava and Kharkiv.
Explosions rocked the capital as people sheltered in basements, corridors and metro stations. Black smoke billowed above the city. Twenty-two people died and 66 were injured, authorities said, including three children.
“A large-scale attack and a completely transparent statement from Russia,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media. “If Ukraine is not protected from ballistic and other missile strikes, these strikes will continue.
“Europe needs its own anti-ballistic missiles so that this war can finally end. And we definitely need the help of the United States in supplying missiles such as Patriots. We count on the support of our partners and effective responses to today’s strike.”
Ukraine’s president has repeatedly said Kyiv is running out of Patriot interceptors, supplied by the US, which are the only air defences capable of blocking fast-moving missiles. Ukraine’s air defences intercepted about half of yesterday’s missiles, but more than 30 hit civilian targets.
Zelenskyy took the unprecedented step last week of writing to the White House and Congress requesting assistance. He called Patriots a “vital tool” in saving human lives. Ballistic missiles were Moscow’s “last major advantage on the battlefield”, he said.
So far, though, the Trump administration has ignored Zelenskyy’s pleas, with hundreds of scarce and expensive Patriots used up in February during the US-Israeli war against Iran.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said yesterday that Russia’s latest strikes showed Vladimir Putin was running out of options. In recent weeks, Ukraine has waged an increasingly successful aerial campaign with long-range drones, hitting oil refineries and ports in Russia as well as a crucial land corridor between occupied southern Ukraine and Crimea.
“Putin is a war criminal and loser who has no cards except terror,” he said. “Moscow is losing on the battlefield. No number of missiles can change this.”
At least 12 people were killed and 37 injured in Dnipro. One of the dead was a three-year-old boy who was buried when a residential building collapsed. Six people were missing in the rubble. A rescuer was also killed in a second, “double-tap”, strike.
Dnipro’s mayor, Borys Filatov, accused Moscow of deliberately using cluster munitions in built-up areas to cause more civilian casualties. He posted a photo on Telegram showing holes gouged in a road.
“Just look down at your feet. The entire tarmac is shattered,” he wrote.
At least 15 people were injured in Kharkiv and residential homes, garages and cars were damaged.
In Kyiv, dozens of rockets and hundreds of drones were let loose on the city, leaving five people dead. People’s possessions had avalanched out of one building, and lay in heaps at its base. Shattered glass lay in flowerbeds. Locals came by clutching lengths of plastic sheeting to cover their blown-out windows – supplies were being handed out in the local aid point in a nearby school. In Unit City, a new residential and office development near Babyn Yar – the memorial to Jewish victims of the second world war – the glazing of the modern glass-fronted blocks was almost entirely blown out and chestnut trees stripped of their leaves.
Thousands took shelter in the Kyiv subway system, some carrying pets, belongings and mattresses.
Another air alert rang out across Kyiv later yesterday morning, forcing people to return to shelters. The Ukrainian writer and blogger Illia Ponomarenko compared the relentless bombardment of the city to German V2 rocket attacks on London during the second world war. The “senseless and futile killings” would not bring Putin victory, he said.
Electricity was cut for 140,000 people in the capital, the power company DTEK told Reuters. It later said utility workers had restored power to 110,000, and two of its engineers had been injured.
On Monday, Zelenskyy repeated warnings of a potentially big assault and urged people to pay special attention to air raid alerts. “Intelligence warnings regarding Russian strikes remain in effect. A massive strike is possible, they have prepared one,” he said in his nightly video address. “Our defenders are ready 24/7 to the fullest extent possible with the supplies currently available.”
Last week Russia said it intended to launch “systematic strikes” on targets linked to the Ukrainian military as well as decision-making centres, and urged foreigners to leave.