KYIV: Russian missile and drone strikes killed at least 17 people and wounded dozens more in Kyiv and the surrounding region overnight, authorities said on Wednesday.

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 that rock buildings and send booms echoing across the city.

“Ballistic interceptors are what could have saved the lives of those killed today,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said. A cloud of smoke hovered over the capital at sunrise, journalists saw, after the attacks sparked fires in several locations in the region. Over 40 people were wounded in the capital and its surrounding areas, local authorities said.

Zelensky says ballistic interceptors ‘could have saved lives’

Journalists heard explosions in Kyiv after midnight (2100 GMT Tuesday), following Ukrainian air force warnings of incoming ballistic missiles. One journalist reported seeing dark smoke and the acrid smell of burning lingering in the air hours later.

‘We were lucky today’

“The night was so terrifying, so hard,” Kyiv resident Natalia Reutska said in the morning after the attack. “We’ve gotten used to waking up thinking, ‘we were lucky today,’ and that’s very scary,” she added.

Ukraine did shoot 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 “horrible atrocities” while French President Emmanuel Macron said France would “not give into intimidation” and called to increase sanctions on Russia. Kyiv can intercept the vast majority of drones, but still relies on supplies from allies to counter missiles.

Zelensky 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, an analysis of Ukrainian air force data published on Saturday showed.

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.

“This is a difficult but necessary decision. The security situation is deteriorating, so it is unacceptable to leave children under the constant threat of Russian attacks,” Donetsk region governor Vadym Filashkin said.

Published in Dawn, August 6th, 2026