Russian missile and drone strikes on Kyiv and the surrounding region killed 17 people and wounded 44 others overnight into Wednesday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
Russia fired 24 ballistic missiles, four other missiles identified as either hypersonic Zircons or supersonic Oniks, and 115 drones, many of them jet-powered, in the attack.
Also on Wednesday, the director of a drone factory in the Urals was badly wounded when his car exploded, the Russian state Tass news agency reported.
Mr Zelensky said the Russian strikes mainly targeted warehouses belonging to civilian businesses, as well as infrastructure and a railway station, hitting sites that he described as “with no connection to the war” — including a brewing company, building materials warehouses and civilian logistics facilities.
The two-hour attack was the latest in a series of large-scale Russian ballistic missile strikes that have become near-routine this summer.
Ukraine has a limited stockpile of interceptor missiles for the US-made Patriot systems, the sole air defence system in its arsenal able to shoot down ballistic missiles, making large volleys like Wednesday’s hard to stop, even as Ukraine has stepped up deep strikes on Russian oil refineries and energy infrastructure.
“Ballistic interceptors are what could have saved the lives of those killed today,” Mr Zelensky said in a statement on Telegram.
“It is very important for our partners to understand that delays in supplying them, or a reluctance to hand over anti-ballistic systems, lead directly to such horrific casualties and destruction.”
In Russia, Tass said that Vladimir Tkachuk was taken to hospital in a grave condition after his car exploded in Bolshoy Istok just outside Yekaterinburg, about 375km east of Moscow. It did not immediately give details of the explosion or say who could be responsible.
Mr Tkachuk headed the Uraldrinzavod factory that manufactured the Upyr drones for the Russian military.
Russian authorities have blamed Kyiv for a series of bombings and other attacks against senior military officials after Moscow sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
The explosion followed Saturday’s deadly bombing at an upscale Moscow restaurant, which the Russian Embassy in Rome blamed on Ukraine, describing it as an attempt to intimidate the Italian community in Russia. It said in a statement on Monday that the attack on the Balzi Rossi restaurant killed five and injured 19.
The Russian Foreign Ministry reposted the embassy statement without comment, and Russia’s security agencies have not named the suspected culprits. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin has described the bombing as a “brutal terrorist act”, but did not say who was responsible.
Several Russian media outlets claimed the bombing targeted a Russian general who was celebrating his birthday at the restaurant. Some claimed that the general was Col Gen Alexander Chaiko, who led the troops that made a botched attempt to storm the Ukrainian capital in 2022 and recently was appointed the chief of Russia’s aerospace forces. The claims could not be independently verified.
In Ukraine, in the wider Kyiv region around the capital, there were fires at multiple locations in Brovary, Bucha and Fastiv districts, Ukraine’s emergency service said.
Large warehouse fires burned in the city of Brovary and the villages of Velyka Dymerka, Kvitneve and Peremoha.
A fire involving vehicles at an enterprise in Fastiv district was extinguished.
In Bucha district, crews battled a warehouse fire in the village of Chaiky after putting out a separate fire at a logistics facility in Sofiivska Borshchahivka.
In the capital, emergency crews extinguished all fires sparked by the strikes in the Obolonskyi, Sviatoshynskyi, Holosiivskyi and Desnianskyi districts, the Kyiv City Military Administration said.
Serhii Beskrestnov, an adviser to Ukraine’s president on defence technology development, said the war of attrition has entered a new phase.
“The enemy is attacking everything indiscriminately — retail warehouses, food storage facilities, logistics hubs, enterprises, building materials warehouses,” he said on Facebook.
One of the companies that came under heavy fire was Epicentr, one of Ukraine’s largest retail and construction chains.
It said in a statement on Facebook that “in minutes, Russian missiles destroyed what the company had built over decades”.
One employee was killed and three others were wounded as Russia hit two of the company’s key logistics hubs.
A direct hit also destroyed the production floor of its ceramic tile factory, forcing the company to halt manufacturing there and shift production abroad, with full recovery expected to take up to two years, the company said.
Epicentr also voiced support for other Ukrainian businesses damaged in the attack, saying it understood “how many years of work, effort, faith and daily responsibility stand behind every enterprise”.
According to the Russian Defence Ministry, the Epicenter logistics centre handled order processing, sorting, storing and delivery of dual-use goods and components for drone production.
Ukraine has carried out its own campaign against Russian retail logistics, striking multiple warehouses belonging to Wildberries — often described as Russia’s answer to Amazon — as part of a broader effort to damage Moscow’s economy and confront Russians with the costs of the war.
