Russian missile, drone attack on Ukraine kills at least 18

Ukrainian rescuers work at the site of a Russian missile strike on a nine-story residential building in Kyiv, Monday. EPA-Yonhap

Russia launched waves of missiles and drones at Ukraine early Monday, killing at least 18 people in an attack that exposed widening gaps in country’s air defenses, authorities said.

All of the ballistic missiles launched by Russia struck their targets, underscoring Kyiv’s need for more Patriot interceptor missiles — a point Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will likely reiterate at a NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, this week.

Twelve people were killed in the capital, Kyiv, which was Russia's main target, according to local officials. Another six people were killed in the wider Kyiv region, said its head Mykola Kalashnyk.

At least 60 people were wounded, according to Zelenskyy, as emergency workers combed through rubble looking for survivors at residential high-rises in two locations that suffered direct hits in the capital.

Days earlier, on Thursday, a Russian strike killed 31 people in Kyiv, the deadliest for the capital this year. Russia’s defense ministry said the bombardment was retaliation for Ukraine’s recent long-range strikes, which have caused severe fuel shortages and pressured President Vladimir Putin.

More than four years after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbor, Ukraine’s advances in drone technology have given it an edge in recent months, analysts and Western officials say. Strikes on supply routes behind the front line have stripped the Russian army of momentum on the battlefield, they say, slowing its advance and driving up the cost.

But Russia is now exploiting a different kind of momentum: vulnerabilities in Ukraine’s air defenses, which remain heavily reliant on U.S. Patriot systems to intercept ballistic missiles it can rarely shoot down any other way. The war in the Middle East has strained the global supply of Patriot interceptors, already produced in limited numbers — a shortage now most of all being felt in Ukraine. (AP)