Russian forces attacked the Ukrainian capital Kyiv with missiles early on Tuesday, triggering fires in the city centre, while a separate overnight assault involving North Korean ballistic missiles killed six people in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian officials said.
Kyiv’s military administration said warehouses in a central district of the capital were ablaze following the strike, according to Reuters. One person was reported injured in the Kyiv attack, and city mayor Vitali Klitschko said medical personnel had been dispatched to the affected central district.
Russia-Ukraine War Latest News: What Happened In Zaporizhzhia During Overnight Strikes?
The heaviest casualties came in Zaporizhzhia, where Russian forces launched missiles and aerial bombs at the city, according to regional governor Ivan Fedorov. President Volodymyr Zelensky said Moscow had used North Korean ballistic missiles in the attack that killed six people there, with 20 others wounded, according to Reuters. Fedorov posted photographs online showing buildings and vehicles ablaze across the city following the assault.
Among the hardest-hit sites was the Zaporizhstal steel plant, where seven workers were killed, forcing the facility to suspend production. Reuters reported that Russia pummelled Zaporizhzhia with Zircon hypersonic missiles, guided aerial bombs and ballistic missiles supplied by Pyongyang during the assault, in what officials described as one of the more intense combined strikes the city has faced in recent weeks.
Russia-Ukraine War Latest News: How Does This Attack Compare To Recent Strikes On Kyiv?
Tuesday’s strike on the capital follows a pattern of repeated Russian assaults on Kyiv throughout the summer. Just six days earlier, a Russian ballistic missile attack targeted warehouse and logistics facilities on the outskirts of the capital, sparking a large fire at a logistics warehouse, according to CNN. Zelensky said at the time that the attack had deliberately targeted warehouses belonging to civilian enterprises, writing on Telegram that a brewery, hardware store warehouses, a railway station and other infrastructure had all been struck.
An even more devastating assault struck Kyiv on 1 August, when Russia launched a heavy ballistic missile and drone attack that killed nine people and wounded 33 others, according to Al Jazeera. In the Solomianskyi district, falling debris damaged a five-storey residential building, killing two people and injuring eight, including two children, while in the Darnytskyi district, seven people were killed and 14 injured as fires damaged homes, vehicles and an administrative building. Lithuania’s embassy in Kyiv was also damaged in that attack after two missiles landed nearby, according to the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry.
Russia-Ukraine War Latest News: Why Is Ukraine Warning It Is Running Low On Air Defences?
The scale and frequency of the strikes have intensified pressure on Ukraine’s already strained air defence network. Following the 1 August attack, Zelensky warned that Ukraine had run out of interceptor missiles for its US-supplied Patriot air defence systems, according to Al Jazeera, a shortfall that has left Ukrainian cities increasingly exposed to sustained missile and drone barrages. That warning appeared to be borne out on Tuesday, when CNN reported that no Russian ballistic missiles were shot down during a separate overnight assault that killed 17 people, underscoring the growing gap between Russia’s offensive capacity and Ukraine’s ability to defend against it.
Ukrainian officials have repeatedly appealed to Western allies to accelerate the supply of interceptor missiles. One senior Ukrainian official said following a recent deadly night of strikes, “Partners who are not ready to help more actively with the supply of interceptors right now can help by imposing new sanctions,” according to CNN, reflecting growing frustration in Kyiv over the pace of Western military support even as strikes have grown more sophisticated and harder to intercept.
Russia-Ukraine War Latest News: What Broader Pattern Do These Strikes Reflect?
Tuesday’s dual attacks on Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia form part of a broader escalation in Russian strikes against Ukrainian cities and infrastructure in recent months, with officials increasingly reporting the use of North Korean-supplied ballistic missiles alongside Russia’s own Zircon hypersonic weapons and Iranian-designed drones. A similarly heavy combined assault struck Kyiv on 5 August, when Russian forces used Iskander missiles, North Korean KN-23 missiles and Zircon hypersonic weapons to strike at least four districts of the capital, causing an ammonia leak and trapping people under rubble, according to Ukrainian media reports.
The involvement of North Korean-supplied weaponry in these attacks has drawn continued international attention to the deepening military cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang, a partnership that has provided Russia with an expanded arsenal even as Western sanctions attempt to constrain its domestic production capacity. US President Donald Trump has continued to signal periodic optimism about a potential resolution to the broader conflict, though no ceasefire framework covering these missile and drone strikes has been agreed by either side.
With casualties mounting in both Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia and Ukraine’s air defences increasingly stretched, officials in Kyiv say the coming weeks are likely to prove critical in determining whether Western allies can supply sufficient interceptor missiles to blunt the intensifying pace of Russian strikes, even as diplomatic efforts to end the wider war continue without a firm resolution in sight.
