KYIV, Ukraine — Russia launched an intense barrage of ballistic missiles and drones overnight into Saturday, killing at least nine people and wounding 33 civilians in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, authorities said.The strikes follow a major Russian attack two days earlier that killed at least 10 people and wounded more than 50 others across Ukraine, as Moscow apparently looks to exploit Kyiv’s critical shortage of Western-supplied anti-ballistic missile defenses. The relentless cycle of attacks dims the potential of reaching a diplomatic end to Russia’s more than 4-year-old invasion of its neighbor.Deaths and damage across KyivA five-story residential building in Kyiv’s Solomianskyi district was damaged by falling debris and a fire broke out. Rescue workers evacuated 35 people from the upper floors of the building and two people died, with eight reported injured, including two children, according to Ukraine’s state emergency service.In the Darnytskyi district of Kyiv, seven people were killed and 14 injured after the attack caused fires and damage to houses, vehicles and other buildings, the emergency services said.Elsewhere, emergency workers extinguished a fire in a nonresidential building in the capital’s Shevchenkivskyi district. There was no additional information about earlier reports by the district mayor that people were trapped in another residential building. Damage to commercial and residential buildings was reported in two other city districts.Lithuania’s foreign minister said the country’s embassy in Kyiv was damaged when missiles struck nearby overnight.Russia’s Defense Ministry said Saturday it had launched a “massive strike” against “Ukrainian military-industrial complex facilities and logistics centers in Kyiv.”Zelensky presses for more air defensePresident Volodymyr Zelensky has pressed the United States and other Western partners over Ukraine’s need for more Patriot anti-ballistic missile defense systems to counter missile attacks from Russia. “Every package of ballistic missile interceptors saves the lives of our people. And every night without them results in more casualties,” he wrote on X following the latest attacks.The Ukrainian leader late Friday said he spoke to Vice President JD Vance and discussed a meeting with President Trump earlier in the week in Washington, which Zelensky described as “positive and productive.”“The Russian air strikes on our country continue and air defense, specifically interceptors for Patriot systems against ballistic missiles, remains a top priority,” Zelensky said Friday in a post on Telegram.At a NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, in July, Trump said the U.S. would give Ukraine a license to make Patriot systems, but he appeared to move away from that commitment on Friday during a Cabinet meeting at the presidential retreat in Camp David, Md., saying he had not yet made a final decision on the matter.Resident describes more frequent attacksFrom a basement shelter where she was taking cover as a second air alarm sounded for another wave, Liudmyla Nakonechna described how she was awoken by loud explosions at 1:30 a.m.“I ran into the corridor and was standing there when the bathroom door was blown off its hinges and struck me in the leg,” said Nakonechna, 64, whose health is poor after undergoing cancer treatment. “I heard the sound of shattering glass. My balcony was covered in glass and it was completely blown apart, while the windows in my bedroom were also blown out.”Nakonechna had not taken cover in a shelter since Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, but the stress became too much, she said.“It’s getting worse by the day,” Nakonechna said. “Whereas before there was an attack once every two weeks, or maybe once a week, now it happens practically every day. It is incredibly hard to bear this psychologically.”In other developments— A Russian airstrike killed one person and wounded five more in the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine, local officials said Saturday.— In Russian-occupied Crimea, the Moscow-appointed head of the city of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said Saturday that a 60-year-old woman was killed and two other people wounded in a drone attack on the city.— Ukrainian drones struck three Russian oil refineries overnight in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan, Zelensky said Saturday. The refineries “process millions of tons of oil each year” and are located less than 1,000 miles from Ukraine, Zelensky said on social media.The Russian online news outlet Astra reported Saturday that a Ukrainian drone set an oil refinery in Ufa, the capital of Bashkortostan, ablaze. Local officials said debris from a downed drone caused “smoke” at an unnamed “industrial zone.” Ukraine’s almost daily long-range drone and missile strikes using domestically developed weapons have battered Russian oil facilities for months. The operation has brought a fuel crisis that is embarrassing the Kremlin more than four years after Russia’s all-out invasion of its neighbor.— A sanctioned Russian container ship, the Yanina, sank in the Black Sea after being hit by Ukrainian drones, Zelensky said Saturday, listing the ship as among “facilities that sustain the war effort.”Russia’s state nuclear energy company, Rosatom, whose shipping subsidiary FESCO operates the vessel, said the ship was carrying “civilian goods” such as frozen food and construction materials.Stepanenko writes for the Associated Press.
