Russia's missile and drone attacks on Ukraine kill at least 22
[July 07, 2026]
By HANNA ARHIROVA, SAMYA KULLAB and ILLIA NOVIKOV
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia unleashed waves of missiles and drones at
Ukraine early Monday, killing at least 22 people in attacks that exposed
widening gaps in the country’s air defenses more than four years into
Moscow's full-scale invasion, authorities said.
All of the ballistic missiles launched by Russia struck their targets,
underscoring Kyiv’s need for more U.S.-made Patriot interceptor missiles
— a point Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will likely reiterate
at a NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, this week.
Fifteen people were killed in the capital of Kyiv, which was Russia's
main target, and 56 were injured, according to administrative head Tymur
Tkachenko. Another seven people were killed in the wider Kyiv region and
29 were injured, according to Ukraine's emergency service.
Emergency workers searched for survivors in the rubble of residential
high-rises in two locations that suffered direct hits.
Moscow has stepped up attacks on Kyiv in retaliation for Ukraine’s
recent long-range strikes, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
Those Ukrainian attacks have caused severe fuel shortages and put
pressure on President Vladimir Putin.
On Thursday, a Russian strike killed 31 people in Kyiv, the deadliest
attack in the capital this year.
Ukraine’s advances in drone technology have given it an edge in recent
months, analysts and Western officials say, striking supply routes
behind the front line, stripping the Russian army of momentum on the
battlefield and slowing its advance.
But Russia now is exploiting vulnerabilities in Ukraine’s air defenses,
which remain heavily reliant on the Patriot missile systems to intercept
ballistic missiles it can rarely shoot down. The war in the Middle East
has strained the global supply of Patriot interceptors — a shortage now
felt keenly in Ukraine.
Zelenskyy notes gaps in stopping ballistic missiles
Ukraine’s air force said Russia fired 351 drones and 68 missiles
overnight, targeting mainly Kyiv, and all 29 ballistic missiles struck
their targets.
“To intercept ballistics, we need the means for interception,” air force
spokesman Yurii Ihnat said on national television. “Russians are
certainly using the fact that there is a serious deficit of interceptor
missiles now, in Ukraine and the world.”
Ahead of the NATO summit in Turkey, Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces had
performed well against drones and cruise missiles but not against
ballistic missiles — a shortfall he blamed on insufficient supplies of
interceptors. He urged U.S. and European partners at the summit to
bolster Ukraine’s air defense and protect civilians.
“As long as Patriot missiles remain in our allies’ stockpiles, Russia is
only encouraged to keep ‘vanquishing’ residential buildings. The United
States and Europe have enough strength to stop this terror,” he said on
X following the attack.
Russia's Defense Ministry said any increase in the supply of drones,
missiles and ammunition produced in the West "will not go unnoticed and
will be countered by a corresponding increase in the number and power of
retaliatory strikes by the Russian armed forces on Ukrainian territory.”
Ukraine’s Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said Russia is deliberately
ramping up ballistic missile attacks on a scale unseen before,
exploiting the acute shortage of Patriot interceptors. “Fewer such
missiles are produced worldwide each month than the enemy fires at
Ukraine in that same period,” he said.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said the attack targeted weapons factories in
Kyiv, including sites it said produce drones, armored vehicles and
missiles, as well as facilities repairing air defense systems and fuel
and energy infrastructure in the capital and surrounding region. The
claims could not be independently verified.
Russia’s attacks have repeatedly hit civilian areas. More than 16,000
Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the war, according to the United
Nations.
“These are residential buildings. Places where people slept and lived
their ordinary lives,” Tkachenko said in a post on Telegram.
A residential building in the Podilskyi district partially collapsed, he
said. In the Darnytsia district, several multistory buildings were
damaged and people were believed to be buried in the rubble.
In Kyiv's suburb of Vyshneve, about 600 residents were evacuated due to
the risk of unexploded munitions, Ukraine's Emergency Service said.
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Rescuers work the scene of a building damaged by Russian missile
attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Efrem
Lukatsky)
Witnesses recount their harrowing escapes
Khrystyna Piatetska, 20, a resident of Kyiv’s Darnytskyi district, said
she began screaming after the first strike, which was followed by a
second blast that blew out the windows in her apartment building.
The lights went out, a burning smell filled the air and the stairwell
was thick with smoke, she said.
“When we were leaving the building, bodies were lying there,” Piatetska
said. “When we got downstairs, cars started exploding, and we came out
from under the rubble straight into the fire.”
Halina Ivanivna, 61, said she was awakened by the first strike about 2
a.m. Moments later, her apartment building began collapsing around her.
“Everything was falling down,” she said. Water poured through the
building as smoke filled the air while emergency crews rushed to
evacuate residents.
About five minutes after the initial impact, a second strike hit, she
said.
Ukrainian strikes reach from Russian-held Crimea to Siberia
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its air defenses downed 613 of 625
Ukrainian drones overnight.
Ukraine’s military said its Special Operations Forces struck the Omsk
oil refinery in western Siberia, nearly 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles)
from Ukraine’s border. That appeared to be the farthest oil refinery in
Russia's east that Ukraine has ever struck, and added to a long list of
key refineries hit in recent months.
Omsk regional Gov. Vitaly Khotsenko confirmed a Ukrainian attack on the
refinery in a Telegram post but provided no details, saying only that
“most of the drones” targeting the facility were destroyed and that
there were no casualties.
The Omsk refinery is Russia’s largest, boasting a capacity of around
460,000 barrels a day, said Gary Peach, oil markets analyst at Energy
Intelligence. As of the end of June, it was producing close to capacity,
accounting for 12% of all Russian refining output, Peach said.
“Depending on the extent of the damage, a sustained outage of even part
of Omsk’s capacity will exacerbate Russia’s woes on the domestic fuel
market and make the need to find import replacements even more urgent,”
he said.
Russia has been grappling with a widespread fuel crisis from Ukraine’s
repeated strikes on refineries and other infrastructure inside the
country. Gasoline shortages and fuel rationing have been reported in
multiple regions, with drivers waiting for hours to fill their tanks.
In Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, an energy provider
reported a blackout across the peninsula following Ukrainian attacks
early Monday. The Moscow-appointed head of the city of Sevastopol,
Mikhail Razvozhayev, said the attacks cut power that was restored with
backup equipment.
Ukraine’s military confirmed it struck several Russian energy and
military facilities used to supply Russia’s armed forces with fuel and
support its war efforts.
In the Russian city of Yaroslavl, two people were wounded in an attack
in which over 70 Ukrainian drones were downed, according to regional
Gov. Mikhail Yevrayev. He didn’t say if any facilities were damaged, but
the Astra online news outlet said they caused a fire at an oil refinery.
Ukrainian drone attack on the Leningrad region north of Moscow damaged
unspecified infrastructure at the Luga training ground, as well as in
the areas of Baltic Sea ports of Ust-Luga and Vysotsk, Gov. Alexander
Drozdenko said.
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Associated Press writers Volodymyr Yurchuk in Kyiv, Ukraine, David
McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany, and Susie Blann in London contributed.
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