Russia and Ukraine trade overnight strikes as Kyiv's air defence runs short
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Russia and Ukraine exchanged strikes overnight that killed civilians and injured many others on both sides, according to local authorities in each country.
In Russia's border region of Belgorod, Ukrainian drones killed five people and injured two dozen others, including a four-year-old boy. Authorities there said the strikes damaged 29 apartment blocks and five private houses, along with administrative buildings and commercial facilities.
Inside Ukraine, Russian missiles struck a high-rise apartment block in the Saltivskyi district of Kharkiv, killing two people and injuring 13, according to regional head Oleh Syniehubov. In the Black Sea port of Odesa, eight more people were injured after what the local administration head Oleh Kiper described as dozens of missiles and drones striking the city and the surrounding region.
Large-scale Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian cities have become almost routine in recent weeks. Moscow has been exploiting a critical shortage in Ukraine of interceptors for the American-made Patriot systems. The Patriot is the only weapon in Ukraine's air defence arsenal able to shoot down ballistic missiles, which makes the supply of its ammunition a decisive constraint.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has spent months lobbying other countries, especially the United States, to send more Patriot systems. Supply has been made scarcer by the Iran war. Failing fresh deliveries, Zelenskyy wants either to manufacture Patriot ammunition inside Ukraine, or to obtain approval from Elon Musk to use the Starlink satellite communications system to guide strikes inside Russia against the launchers firing the missiles.
Kyiv has meanwhile kept up long-range drone strikes against Russian energy infrastructure and other targets deep inside the country, including the country's largest online retailer, Wildberries. Those strikes have sparked a fuel crisis in Russia.
Russia's Defence Ministry said its overnight strikes had hit drone warehouses in the Kharkiv region as well as fuel depots and stores of other materiel belonging to Ukraine's armed forces at the port of Odesa. It claimed its forces shot down 153 Ukrainian drones during the night, including over Russian-occupied Crimea and over the Black and Azov seas.
Why it matters
This is a war increasingly decided by supply rather than by manoeuvre. The single most important fact in the report is not a casualty figure but an inventory one: Ukraine is short of Patriot interceptors, and Russia is timing its strikes around that shortage. That connects the fighting to questions of defence procurement, technology transfer and the reach of private companies into state conflict, since a satellite network owned by one businessman is being discussed as a targeting tool. The knock-on effects on energy infrastructure and fuel supply also show how modern conflict reaches civilian economies far from the front.
Test yourself
1. How many people were killed by Ukrainian drone strikes in Belgorod?
2. Which weapon is described as the only one in Ukraine's arsenal able to shoot down ballistic missiles?
3. What has made Patriot supply scarcer, according to the report?
4. What does Zelenskyy want approval from Elon Musk for?
5. Which Ukrainian city's Saltivskyi district was struck by Russian missiles?
6. How many Ukrainian drones did Russia's Defence Ministry claim to have shot down overnight?
7. Which Russian online retailer was named as a target of Ukrainian drone strikes?
8. What effect have Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy infrastructure had?
9. Which port did Russia say it struck for fuel depots and materiel?
10. How many apartment blocks were damaged in Belgorod?
Your notes
Source: The Hindu