Kyiv (CNN) — Russia has launched one of its largest ballistic missile attacks against Ukraine since launching its full-scale invasion more than four years ago.
Ukraine’s air force said Moscow had launched “a massive combined strike against Ukraine using attack UAVs and various types of air- and ground-launched missiles” overnight into Sunday, and that the main target was the capital Kyiv.
“The enemy launched more than 40 missiles of various types – most of them against the capital – and 120 attack drones,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
CNN journalists in the city reported that the barrage was intense, concentrated in a two-hour spell overnight. On Sunday morning there was a strong smell of smoke in the city, one said, and an air raid alert was still in place.
Andriy Sybiha, acting minister of foreign affairs, said Russia had launched “around four dozen” missiles traveling on a ballistic trajectory, describing it as the “largest number of ballistic missiles since the start of the war.”
Air defenses had “shot down or neutralized 126 targets, including 18 missiles and 108 unmanned aerial vehicles,” the air force said. But 23 missiles and 10 drones had hit 20 locations, it added.
Images from Kyiv showed a huge crater gouged out of the ground, and the scorched facades of buildings. A large logistics warehouse was severely damaged.
Strikes were reported in five districts of the capital, according to the state emergency services. One person had been killed and 16 wounded in the city, they said.
Across Ukraine, local authorities have reported at least 16 civilians killed and 77 injured in the past 24 hours by Russian drone and missile attacks, with most of the casualties in the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions.
The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed what it called a “massive strike” against what it called “defense industry facilities and logistics centers in the city of Kyiv,” and said later on its Telegram channel: “We’re loaded and carrying on.”
The Russian strikes follow devastating Ukrainian drone attacks on two logistics centers early Saturday in which eight people were killed.
“Protection against ballistic missiles is our constant and top priority right now,” Zelensky said. “Interceptors are needed every day, and I am grateful to everyone who takes our agreements seriously and ensures the delivery of anti-ballistic capabilities.”
Ukraine has frequently pleaded for more interceptors capable of dealing with ballistic missiles, whose trajectory and speed make them difficult to take out. They can re-enter the atmosphere at several times the speed of sound.
Russia is increasing the frequency of combined missile and drone strikes to destroy Ukrainian infrastructure, analysts say.
“The bombardment of Ukrainian cities by Russian ballistic missiles is now a preferred strategy and something that we should expect to see more of,” according to Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
Ukraine has a dwindling stock of US-made Patriot missiles, which are also heavily in demand among US allies amid the Gulf conflict. While production of the Patriot is being ramped up in the United States, demand exceeds supply.
Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump proposed that Ukraine produce Patriots under license, but such a project would take months and possibly years to come to fruition.
Ukraine is also working with France and Italy on arrangements to produce another air defense missile, the SAMP/T. But some analysts have said its performance has at times fallen short of the Patriot’s.
The market for interceptors capable of destroying ballistic missiles has “a limited number of suppliers, long lead times, and unresolved questions over capability,” according to Fabian Hoffmann at the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies.
Ukraine has maintained its strikes against Russian energy infrastructure with another attack early Sunday on the export hub that brings oil from Kazakhstan to the Black Sea.
The Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which operates the hub off Russia’s Black Sea coast, said on Sunday that two tankers had been hit and that oil loading has been stopped. It said there were no casualties.
The same site was struck on Friday.
The Ukrainians said Sunday they had used a maritime drone to hit a tanker in the Black Sea that operated as part of Russia’s shadow fleet. It named the tanker as the Avero, which entered the Black Sea on Thursday but is not sanctioned by the US or Europe, according to ship-tracking service MarineTraffic.
Three oil depots in southern Russia were also struck, according to the Ukrainian Security Service.
The-CNN-Wire
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