Russia escalates bombing campaign on Ukrainian cities amid missile defense shortages

Russia launched a large-scale overnight aerial assault on cities across Ukraine into Thursday, striking apartment buildings in the western city of Lviv, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy renewed his appeal for faster delivery of Western air defenses. Officials said the nationwide attacks killed at least eight people, with six of those deaths reported in a Kryvyi Rih suburb and the rest elsewhere.

According to Al Jazeera, Zelenskyy said Russia fired more than 70 missiles, a significant number of them ballistic, along with more than 280 attack drones, and that Ukrainian air defenses shot down more than 260 of the drones. The heaviest casualties and damage were reported in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region and the western region of Lviv.

In Lviv, a city near the Polish border that has often been seen as comparatively removed from front-line fighting, missiles damaged apartment buildings at two locations. Ukrinform reported that Lviv Mayor Andrii Sadovyi said, according to preliminary information, that people had been injured in the attack across the city. Maksym Kozytskyi, head of the Lviv regional military administration, said at least 30 people were injured there, Al Jazeera reported.

Rescue crews worked through the rubble of a damaged five-story residential block. According to UNN, emergency workers pulled a 93-year-old woman from beneath the debris, and Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi said dozens of people had been rescued from the site.

Deaths in a Kryvyi Rih suburb

In the Dnipropetrovsk region, a missile struck a private home in a village on the outskirts of Kryvyi Rih. Ukrinform reported that Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the city’s defense council, said two girls, aged 5 and 12, and four adults were killed, and that eight people were injured, including two boys. Vilkul said the house was hit by an Iskander-M ballistic missile and that the death toll could rise as crews cleared the rubble.

According to Al Jazeera, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said its air defenses had shot down 258 Ukrainian drones overnight. Penza Governor Oleg Melnichenko said a depot belonging to the online retailer Wildberries was set on fire, that one person was injured and that about 200 workers were evacuated.

A shortage of interceptors

The strikes were the latest in a series of large-scale Russian attacks that Al Jazeera reported Moscow has intensified over the summer, now occurring on an almost weekly basis. Zelenskyy said on X that “it is important to support the protection of life,” and that defense against the missile threat “cannot be left to Ukraine alone or to any one country alone.” He said delays in the delivery of anti-ballistic missiles had contributed to the scale of the destruction.

The appeal comes as Ukraine has reported a critical shortage of the interceptors needed to stop Russian ballistic missiles. Earlier in July, Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said the country’s forces had downed no ballistic missiles in an overnight attack because of a lack of Patriot interceptors, telling reporters there was a “serious shortage” of the munitions, The War Zone reported. The outlet noted that the Patriot is the only system in Ukraine’s arsenal capable of intercepting Russian ballistic missiles such as the Iskander-M.

Zelenskyy has said allies were not meeting commitments to supply promised anti-missile munitions. The War Zone reported that he singled out an agreement with Norway to pay for 200 missiles, saying that none had yet arrived. According to the Kyiv Post, Ukraine urgently needs PAC-3 Patriot interceptors, which the outlet described as costly and slow to produce.

Efforts to expand supply through domestic production remain years away from delivering results. Tech Times reported that Ukraine has signed licensing arrangements with Patriot manufacturers, but that analysts cited component lead times of 24 to 30 months, meaning no license signed in 2026 would yield a Ukrainian-made interceptor in the near term.

Zelenskyy said continued support for Ukraine’s air defenses was essential to protecting lives, adding that what Ukraine needs from its partners is for them to follow through on what was agreed.