Russian missile and drone strikes across Ukraine, kill 8 civilians

A Russian ballistic missile and drone barrage across Ukraine overnight into Thursday killed at least eight civilians, including children, and wounded dozens of others, officials said.

The blitz expanded Russia’s almost daily bombardment of Ukrainian cities as Moscow apparently looked to exploit Kyiv’s critical shortage of Western-supplied anti-ballistic missile defences. NATO member Poland, meanwhile, was looking into Ukrainian reports that a Russian cruise missile entered its airspace during the onslaught.

The barrage spanned regions across Ukraine, including areas by the border with Poland that are far from the front line in the east of the country and where Ukraine is believed to store and manufacture weapons for its fight against Russia’s more than four-year-old invasion. The attack came two days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met in Washington with US President Donald Trump and representatives of American defence companies, as he pleads for swifter and bigger deliveries of Patriot air defence systems that are the best way to stop Russia’s ballistic assaults. 

Trump has promised to grant Ukraine licences to build its own Patriots, but production could take a long time to set up. “Given the critical shortage of air defence missiles from our partners, our warriors are accomplishing truly incredible things, demonstrating a very high level of professionalism,” Zelenskyy said on social media.