Kyiv, Ukraine (CNN) — At least 17 people were killed and dozens wounded in Kyiv and surrounding areas overnight as Russia fired more than two dozen ballistic and anti-ship missiles, none of which were intercepted by Ukrainian defenses.
The deadly assault underlines the worsening danger for urban civilians far from the front lines, as Ukraine grapples with perilously low stocks of missile interceptors.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky once again called on Ukraine’s allies to provide it with the military hardware required to down Russian missiles.
“It is crucial that our partners realize that delays in their delivery or a reluctance to provide anti-ballistic systems lead precisely to such horrific casualties and destruction,” he said in his post. “Partners who are not ready to help more actively with the supply of interceptors right now can help by imposing new sanctions.”
The strikes also caused damage to prominent businesses in Ukraine, including the country’s largest e-commerce platform, Rozetka, and Epicentr, a retail chain comparable to IKEA.
Iryna Chechotkina, co-owner of Rozetka, said that three ballistic missiles struck a warehouse complex. “Last night I watched as the work of my entire life went up in flames,” she wrote on Facebook.
In a statement, Epicentr said Russia launched a “devastating attack” on its manufacturing infrastructure, killing one of its male employees. “In a matter of minutes, Russian missiles destroyed what the company had been building for decades,” the statement said.
FOZZY group, which is one of Ukraine’s largest retailers that operates supermarket chains, said Russian shelling caused fires at two of its distribution centers. It said that six of its employees had been killed, while more have been injured.
In July, Russian attacks killed at least 377 civilians and wounded 2,129 others in Ukraine, making it the deadliest month of the invasion there since April 2022, as the more than four-year-long war grinds on.
Recent Ukrainian strikes on Wildberries – Russia’s equivalent of e-commerce giant Amazon – have brought Moscow’s war on Ukraine even closer to home by disrupting the lives and livelihoods of ordinary Russians.
Moscow’s attack overnight into Wednesday seemed to offer a riposte to the Wildberries onslaught, targeting warehouse and logistics facilities in and around the Ukrainian capital. Images from emergency services showed extensive damage to a number of industrial buildings in the Kyiv region.
“The main targets of the attack were warehouses belonging to civilian enterprises,” Zelensky said in his post on Telegram. A brewery and hardware store warehouses, a railway station and other infrastructure were struck, he said.
“Rescue workers are continuing to operate under high-risk conditions, as the risk of further enemy strikes persists,” the State Emergency Service of Ukraine said Wednesday.
Moscow’s Ministry of Defense said its military had “launched a massive strike using ground-based precision-guided weapons and long-range strike drones.”
The attack hit “transport, logistics and distribution centers,” it said, asserting that they had been “involved in the storage and delivery of various weapons and military cargo, as well as in the production and distribution of unmanned aerial vehicles.”
Ukraine faces a shortage of US-made interceptors for Patriots – the only defense system that can bring down certain advanced ballistic missiles.
Late last month, US President Donald Trump said he was hesitant to allow Ukraine to build its own Patriot missile interceptors – an idea he first announced on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Turkey last month.
Ukraine launched its own assault on Russia overnight, striking another Wildberries sorting center in the Tula oblast, the local governor said. Damage was also reported at two apartment buildings and other industrial facilities.
Separately on Wednesday, the director of a Russian defence company has been left in intensive care following a car explosion, according to Russian state media reports.
Vladimir Tkachuk, CEO of Uraldrone Plant, which produces kamikaze Russian drones known as Upyr drones, was injured in the incident in Russia’s west-central Sverdlovsk region, state news agency RIA Novosti reported. He is left fighting for his life, the agency reported.
A murder investigation has been opened, RIA Novosti reported, citing emergency services.
As well as property damage, at least 61 people were killed and 327 others wounded in the last week of July by Ukrainian drone strikes and shelling, according to the Russian foreign ministry.
The overnight attacks also come days after Moscow said debris from a Ukrainian drone fell onto a crowded beach in southern Russia on Monday, killing at least seven people.
A day later, shocking footage emerged of a Russian drone stalking a vegetable vendor in the Ukrainian city of Kherson, chasing him around a vehicle before exploding. The man was injured, but survived the attack.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
The-CNN-Wire
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