Russia Pummels Kyiv With 74 Missiles, 496 Drones
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- Russia launched 74 missiles and 496 drones at Kyiv overnight Thursday, killing at least 21 people, wounding more than 90 (including children and paramedics), and damaging around 130 buildings in the capital of about 3 million — the deadliest Kyiv strike since at least May.
- President Zelenskiy cut short his Ireland visit to tour a half-destroyed nine-story residential building, publicly blaming partners for failing to deliver promised air defenses on time and citing acute shortages of Patriot missiles.
- Russia's Defence Ministry claimed the barrage struck military, energy, and airport targets, framing the attack as retaliation for Ukrainian drone strikes that have crippled Russian refineries and forced Moscow to import gasoline from India.
- Kyiv retaliated overnight by hitting an oil refinery in Russia's Nizhny Novgorod region, killing one person, as part of its deepened campaign against Russian energy infrastructure.
- EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said she would propose fresh sanctions on entities supporting Russia's military-industrial complex, declaring: 'The more Moscow attacks civilians, the more sanctions must be imposed.'
- Zelenskiy disclosed that Ukrainian and U.S. negotiators held talks in the past two days, and said he hoped to meet President Trump on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Turkey next week.
- Poland scrambled fighter jets as a precaution and Finland briefly imposed an aviation restriction in the eastern Gulf of Finland, while the EU ambassador to Ukraine reported that diplomatic housing was struck and engulfed in fire.
Why it matters: Zelenskiy's on-camera rebuke of allies over delayed air defenses, paired with strikes hitting an EU diplomatic residence and Ukraine's national biochemistry institute, puts immediate pressure on NATO and EU members to accelerate missile deliveries rather than rely on diplomatic tracks. The reciprocal escalation — Russia's record barrage against Kyiv and Ukraine's refinery strike — shows the tit-for-tat cycle has no off-ramp without new air defense commitments arriving.
