The Russian Defense Ministry announced it carried out “massive” missile and drone strikes on nine Ukrainian cities Wednesday night, which continued into the daylight hours Thursday morning.
The Defense Ministry claims its forces targeted military-related sites, such as industrial facilities, oil refineries, logistics hubs and port infrastructure. This included facilities and energy infrastructure in the Poltava region, according to Vitalii Diakivnych, head of the Poltava military administration. Odesa, a vital port for Ukraine’s precious grain exports, was also subjected to a more than seven-hour bombardment, according to the head of Odesa’s military administration Oleh Kiper.
Ukrainian officials said that civilian areas, such as apartment buildings, were hit in the attack. They said a person was killed in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, another in the northern Kharkiv region, and 14 others were wounded elsewhere.
Ukraine’s air force claimed to have shot down or suppressed seven Russian ballistic missiles, although they didn’t specify how they achieved that.
The attacks come as Ukraine faces a desperate shortage of American-made Patriot air defense interceptors, which have left it vulnerable to Russian strikes. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has made it a priority in recent months to secure more, by urging the United States and Europe for their support.
“Russia continues to invest in missiles and in expanding its war, and that means more countermeasures are needed,” he said on social media. “It is important that these [measures] are also supplemented by additional ballistic missile defense packages”
Zelenskyy visited the US Capitol on July 28, after attending the funeral of the late Senator Lindsey Graham. There, he told lawmakers that Ukraine was standing strong but was in dire need of Patriot missiles (as well as their licensing agreements), expanded access to Elon Musk’s Starlink, and for a Russia sanctions bill devised by Graham to pass in the Senate.
The bill, officially titled the “Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act of 2026”, was passed in the Senate 86-11 and penalizes countries that continue to buy Russian oil, gas, and other imports.
Ukraine continues to strike at targets within Russia, in an effort to “bring the war home” and create general disruption in their society and economy. At the same time, Russia carries on with strikes aimed at wrecking Ukraine’s power grid before the freezing winter months.
