Russian missiles pound Kyiv overnight

About 40 Russian missiles hit Kyiv overnight in strikes that lasted roughly five hours, according to The Guardian, in what Ukrainian officials described as the largest ballistic-missile attack on the capital since the full-scale invasion began. Kyiv’s military said it shot down 18 missiles and 108 of 125 drones, but at least one person was killed and seven were injured. Fires broke out at multiple sites, and the ceiling of the ground-floor vestibule at Lukyanivska metro station collapsed from a blast wave, forcing the station’s temporary closure.

The numbers in Kyiv’s own accounting show the arithmetic of air defence: even a high intercept rate still leaves enough missiles and drones getting through to set buildings alight, trap residents, and shut public infrastructure. Ukraine’s leadership has been publicly warning that interceptor stocks are dwindling; President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last week that the US and Ukraine had reached a political agreement on licences to produce Patriot interceptors, with hopes production could begin by the end of the year. That timeline matters because Russia’s campaign has shifted toward near-daily mixed salvos that combine drones with ballistic and other missiles, forcing defenders to keep radars, crews and launchers on constant alert.

The same night’s reporting also puts the attack inside a domestic political moment. The Guardian notes that the strikes came amid large anti-government protests in Kyiv following Zelenskyy’s decision to sack Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, with protesters calling for Fedorov’s reinstatement and for the dismissal of Commander-in-Chief Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi. War compresses decision-making into a small circle, but it also makes personnel changes harder to separate from procurement, command relationships and accountability when the capital itself is repeatedly hit.

On the ground, the details are mundane in a way official communiqués rarely capture: a resident injured when a blast tore off a balcony door; rescuers pulling people from a burning home; office and residential buildings burning across several districts. Kyiv can keep its economy and government functioning only so long as transport nodes, shelters and basic services remain usable.

Lukyanivska station’s closed entrance is a small, concrete outcome of the night’s barrage, but it is also the kind of disruption that accumulates one collapsed ceiling at a time.