Russia unleashed waves of missiles and drones at Ukraine early Monday, killing at least 22 people in attacks that exposed with brutal clarity the widening gap in Ukraine’s air defence capabilities at the most consequential moment of the year — the eve of the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, where Ukraine’s allies were gathering to discuss exactly the weapons that could have prevented Monday’s carnage.
All 29 ballistic missiles Russia fired struck their targets. Ukraine’s air defences intercepted nearly all of the drones, but against ballistic missiles — which travel faster than the speed of sound and follow trajectories that are far harder to track and intercept — they were essentially defenceless.
What Happened
Russia unleashed waves of missiles and drones at Ukraine early Monday, killing at least 22 people in attacks that exposed widening gaps in the country’s air defences more than four years into Moscow’s full-scale invasion. Fifteen people were killed in the capital of Kyiv, which was Russia’s main target, and 56 were injured. Another seven people were killed in the wider Kyiv region and 29 were injured.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia fired 351 drones and 68 missiles overnight, targeting mainly Kyiv, and all 29 ballistic missiles struck their targets. Moscow has stepped up attacks on Kyiv in retaliation for Ukraine’s recent long-range strikes, which have caused severe fuel shortages and put pressure on President Vladimir Putin.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said there was destruction and damage in four districts of the city, with the Podilsky district hit the hardest. Rescuers evacuated residents, including children, from the upper floors of a damaged building in the district early Monday. In the Darnytsia district, several multistory buildings were damaged and people were believed to be buried in the rubble. In Kyiv’s suburb of Vyshneve, about 600 residents were evacuated due to the risk of unexploded munitions.
The Ballistic Missile Crisis
The most alarming aspect of Monday’s attack was not its scale but its strategic implication: Ukraine’s air defences intercepted the drones effectively but were completely unable to stop a single ballistic missile.
“To intercept ballistics, we need the means for interception,” air force spokesperson 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.”
Ukraine’s Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said Russia is deliberately ramping up ballistic missile attacks on a scale unseen before, exploiting the acute shortage of Patriot interceptors. “Fewer such missiles are produced worldwide each month than the enemy fires at Ukraine in that same period,” he said.
The Patriot system — manufactured by the United States — remains the most capable tool available for intercepting ballistic missiles at the ranges and speeds at which Russia is deploying them. Ukraine has multiple batteries but a severe shortage of interceptor missiles — the actual ammunition that the Patriot systems fire at incoming threats. The war in the Middle East has strained the global supply of Patriot interceptors — a shortage now felt keenly in Ukraine. US and allied production of Patriot interceptors has not kept pace with the combined demand from Ukraine’s war and the Iran conflict’s air defence requirements across the Gulf.
Monday’s Attack — Deliberate Timing Before NATO
The deadly Russian strikes came on the eve of a critical NATO summit in Turkey that US President Donald Trump plans to attend. The timing was almost certainly not coincidental. Russia’s attack on Kyiv the night before NATO leaders gathered to discuss Ukraine support has become a recurring feature of Russian military planning — a signal that Moscow is undeterred by allied deliberations and is capable of inflicting civilian casualties at will.
Ahead of the summit, Zelensky is using the attacks on Kyiv to renew his plea for allies to supply Ukraine with missiles for Patriot systems. “It is critically important that the world — first and foremost the United States and our European partners — come out of the NATO Summit in Ankara with strong decisions in support of our air defense,” he said.
Ahead of the NATO summit in Turkey, Zelensky said Ukrainian forces had performed well against drones and cruise missiles but not against ballistic missiles — a shortfall he blamed on insufficient supplies of interceptors. He urged US and European partners at the summit to bolster Ukraine’s air defence and protect civilians. “As long as Patriot missiles remain in our allies’ stockpiles, Russia is only encouraged to keep ‘vanquishing’ residential buildings.”
Ukraine Strikes Russia’s Largest Oil Refinery
Even as Russia was hitting Kyiv, Ukraine hit back at Russia’s most consequential energy infrastructure. Ukraine’s military said its Special Operations Forces struck the Omsk oil refinery in western Siberia, nearly 2,500 kilometres from Ukraine’s border. That appeared to be the farthest oil refinery in Russia’s east that Ukraine has ever struck.
The Omsk refinery is Russia’s largest, boasting a capacity of around 460,000 barrels a day, accounting for 12% of all Russian refining output. “Depending on the extent of the damage, a sustained outage of even part of Omsk’s capacity will exacerbate Russia’s woes on the domestic fuel market and make the need to find import replacements even more urgent,” said Gary Peach, oil markets analyst at Energy Intelligence.
What the NATO Summit Must Now Address
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is at the NATO summit, with reports suggesting that he and Trump will meet privately. Ukraine has made significant investments in its own defence industry, but still relies on the US for more advanced systems, particularly to meet air defence needs.
NATO members are set to pledge €70 billion in military assistance to Ukraine for 2026 and “at least equivalent levels” of support in 2027, according to a draft Ankara Declaration.
The US ambassador to NATO said the alliance has sold over $6 billion of US-made systems, including Patriot air defence missiles, to NATO allies who have then provided those to Ukraine, stressing that NATO allies are “working together to support Ukraine.”
But the gap between financial commitments and the physical supply of interceptor missiles — which cannot be conjured by pledges alone and whose production lines are running at capacity — is the central challenge that Monday’s attack has made impossible to paper over with communiqué language. Russia’s Defence Ministry warned that any increase in the supply of drones, missiles and ammunition produced in the West “will not go unnoticed and will be countered by a corresponding increase in the number and power of retaliatory strikes by the Russian armed forces on Ukrainian territory.”
What the Human Cost Looks Like
An entire family was killed and pulled from the rubble in Kyiv, while cars were seen burning on city streets. More than 16,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the war, according to the United Nations. Kyiv’s city military administration head Tymur Tkachenko said of Monday’s strikes: “These are residential buildings. Places where people slept and lived their ordinary lives.”
The question before NATO in Ankara is whether that description — residential buildings where people sleep and live — is sufficient to accelerate the delivery of the interceptor missiles that Ukraine’s air force has been asking for since the beginning of the year. Monday’s attack provided the most vivid possible answer to what happens when the supply falls short.
