Russia kills 21 near Kyiv as Patriot shortages expose Ukraine's air defence gaps

Kyiv,UPDATED: Jul 6, 2026 20:58 IST

Russia launched waves of missiles and drones at Ukraine early Monday, killing at least 21 people in and around Kyiv, in an attack that highlighted growing gaps in Ukraine's air defences more than four years into Moscow's full-scale invasion, officials said.

Ukraine said Russia fired 351 drones and 68 missiles overnight, mainly targeting Kyiv, and that all 29 ballistic missiles struck their targets. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to press allies for more US-made Patriot interceptor missiles at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, this week.

According to Tymur Tkachenko, the head of Kyiv's administration, 15 people were killed in the capital and 56 were injured. Another six people were killed in the wider Kyiv region and 21 were injured, according to regional administration head Mykhola Kalashnyk and other emergency officials. Emergency workers searched for survivors in the rubble of residential high-rises at two sites that were directly hit.

Russia's Defence Ministry said the strike targeted weapons factories in Kyiv, including sites it claimed produced drones, armoured vehicles and missiles, as well as facilities repairing air defence systems and fuel and energy infrastructure in the capital and surrounding region. Those claims could not be independently verified. Russia has stepped up strikes on Kyiv in what its Defence Ministry described as retaliation for Ukraine's recent long-range strikes, which have caused severe fuel shortages and put pressure on President Vladimir Putin. On Thursday, a Russian strike killed 31 people in Kyiv, the deadliest attack in the capital this year.

Analysts and Western officials say Ukraine's advances in drone technology have helped it hit supply routes behind the front line, strip the Russian army of momentum on the battlefield and slow its advance. But Russia is now exploiting weaknesses in Ukraine's air defences, which rely heavily on Patriot systems to intercept ballistic missiles. The war in the Middle East has strained global supplies of Patriot interceptors, and Ukraine is now feeling that shortage sharply.

"To intercept ballistics, we need the means for interception," air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said on national television. "Russians are certainly using the fact that there is a serious deficit of interceptor missiles now, in Ukraine and the world." Ahead of the summit, Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces had performed well against drones and cruise missiles but not against ballistic missiles, which he blamed on insufficient supplies of interceptors. "As long as Patriot missiles remain in our allies' stockpiles, Russia is only encouraged to keep vanquishing residential buildings. The United States and Europe have enough strength to stop this terror," he said on X. Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said Russia was deliberately increasing ballistic missile attacks on a scale not seen before. "Fewer such missiles are produced worldwide each month than the enemy fires at Ukraine in that same period," he said.

Russia's attacks have repeatedly hit civilian areas, and the United Nations says more than 16,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the war. "These are residential buildings. Places where people slept and lived their ordinary lives," Tkachenko said in a post on Telegram. He said part of a residential building collapsed in Kyiv's Podilskyi district, while several multi-storey buildings were damaged in the Darnytsia district and people were believed to be trapped under the rubble. In Vyshneve, a suburb of Kyiv, about 600 residents were evacuated because of the risk from unexploded munitions, Ukraine's Emergency Service said.

Residents described a chaotic escape. Khrystyna Piatetska, 20, from Kyiv's Darnytskyi district, said she began screaming after the first strike, which was followed by a second blast that blew out the windows in her apartment building. She said the lights went out, a burning smell filled the air and the stairwell was thick with smoke. "When we were leaving the building, bodies were lying there," Piatetska said. "When we got downstairs, cars started exploding, and we came out from under the rubble straight into the fire." Halina Ivanivna, 61, said she was awakened by the first strike at about 2 am and that moments later her apartment building began collapsing around her. "Everything was falling down," she said, adding that water poured through the building as smoke filled the air and emergency crews rushed to evacuate residents. About five minutes after the initial impact, a second strike hit, she said.

Russia's Defence Ministry said its air defences downed 519 Ukrainian drones overnight. Ukraine's military said its Special Operations Forces struck the Omsk oil refinery in western Siberia, which it described as Russia's largest and said was nearly 2,500 kilometres from the border. Regional Governor Vitaly Khotsenko said several Ukrainian drones hit in Omsk but gave no further details. An energy provider in Russian-held Crimea reported a blackout across the peninsula after Ukrainian attacks early Monday, while Sevastopol's Moscow-appointed head, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said power was restored with backup equipment. Ukraine's military also said it struck several Russian energy and military facilities used to supply Russian forces with fuel and support the war effort. In Yaroslavl, regional Governor Mikhail Yavrayev said two people were wounded in an attack in which more than 70 Ukrainian drones were downed. He did not say whether any facilities were damaged, but the Astra online news outlet said a fire broke out at an oil refinery. Leningrad region Governor Alexander Drozdenko said a Ukrainian drone attack damaged unspecified infrastructure at the Luga training ground and in the areas of the Baltic Sea ports of Ust-Luga and Vysotsk.

The latest attacks left heavy casualties in Kyiv and the surrounding region, sharpened Ukraine's calls for more Patriot interceptors, and came as both sides reported fresh strikes on military and energy targets.

With PTI Inputs

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