2 days ago
Russia Launches Heavy Strikes Despite Trump Arms Pledge to Ukraine
EDITORS NOTE: EDS: REPEATING to RECODE as a Page 1 refer and to UPDATE list of related stories.); (With: UKRAINE-WEAPONS, HEGSETH-UKRAINE, RUSSIAN-CONDUCTOR-CANCEL); Liubov Sholudko and Kim Barker contributed reporting.
KYIV, Ukraine -- An explosion damaged the entrance to a Kyiv subway station where people were sheltering from an air attack. A missile or a drone set an empty kindergarten on fire in the Ukrainian capital, officials said. And a city in western Ukraine endured its heaviest barrage of the war.
Russia overnight Monday fired the latest in a series of missile and exploding drone assaults at Ukraine that have steadily escalated in recent months even as ceasefire talks began in the spring. At least two people were killed and 15 others injured, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine said.
The recent strikes have caught the attention of President Donald Trump, who cited the Russian bombing campaign when he announced a plan last week to provide new military aid for Ukraine. The attacks early Monday were the first large volleys since that announcement, when Trump said "we are very unhappy" with Russia.
Trump said the United States would sell Patriot air defense systems to allies who quickly provide their own systems to Ukraine, bolstering defenses. But the attack Monday highlighted a rising menace the American missiles cannot counter: vast assaults of slow-flying, exploding drones, fired nearly nightly.
In Kyiv, the engines of Russian drones flying over the city were heard nearly continuously from after midnight until first light, interspersed with dozens of explosions.
One explosion hit the entryway to the Lukianivska subway station while dozens of people sheltered inside, sending clouds of dust and smoke billowing down escalators and through tunnels. Men, women and children awoke coughing in clouds of smoke, said Diane Mailat, 23, a hairdresser who was sheltering in the station with her husband and cat. They had believed they would be safe on the platform, more than 200 feet underground.
"People started to panic," she said. Some clambered with children and pets into the train tunnels to escape the smoke. Only after about an hour did the dust settle.
The mayor of Ivano-Frankivsk, a city in western Ukraine that had been a haven from the violence and rarely targeted, reported the most intensive strikes of the war early Monday.
The escalation of the air war comes as Russia has successfully stepped up its industrial-scale manufacturing of exploding drones and decoys, which are small drones fired into Ukraine mostly to distract air defense teams. Moscow's rate of fire with cruise and ballistic missiles has remained steady, according to the Ukrainian military.
To protect against missiles, Ukraine is expecting a first delivery of Patriots from Germany under the agreement Trump announced last week.
The Patriots are not cost-effective against the cheap, mass-produced exploding drones that now pose the gravest risks for Ukraine from sheer volume. Russia uses a model, Shahed, originally designed in Iran. Now more Shaheds hit targets in Ukraine than missiles, the Ukrainian military says.
Russia launched 728 drones and decoys overnight into July 9, according to the Ukrainian air force. That is more than Russia fired in the whole month of July last year. On Monday, the air force said it had shot down or electronically jammed 403 out of 426 drones in the volley.
By fall, Ukrainian officials say they expect Russia to routinely launch 1,000 drones per volley. The officer overseeing a Ukraine task force in Germany's military, Maj. Gen. Christian Freuding, estimated last week that Russia planned to eventually launch 2,000 drones at a time.
The Russian strategy is akin to shooting a shotgun, as firing drones in vast numbers ensures some reach a target even as many miss or are shot down. In another setback for Ukraine, Russia's rate of breaching air defenses with Shahed drones is also rising: Last year, 7% hit their targets. So far this year, 11% have, according to air force figures.
Ukrainian and Western engineers are experimenting with methods like lasers, robotic gun turrets and interceptor drones to bolster interception rates. Ukraine currently uses machine guns mounted on trucks, helicopters, fighter jets and domestically made interceptor drones.
Beyond the damage from direct hits, the drones have a psychological effect in depriving civilians and soldiers of sleep during overnight attacks. They also signal to the Ukrainian population that all locations in Ukraine are at risk of frequent attacks.
The recent attacks by Moscow have shown no sign of relenting even as the Trump administration seeks to end the war with ceasefire talks.
Trump has recently shifted from a policy of blaming Ukraine for causing the invasion to one aimed at helping the country to defend itself more effectively.
At the same time, Ukraine has also been conducting long-range drone strikes into Russia, including a barrage overnight Saturday into Sunday. Russia's military said it had shot down more than 230 drones in the attacks, which delayed flights at Russian airports but did not appear to have caused any casualties.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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