At least 15 people have been killed, and another 42 are wounded after a huge barrage of missiles sent Kyiv up in flames – with footage showing the city rocked by explosions overnight.
The attack was the latest in a series of large-scale Russian ballistic missile strikes that have become near-routine this summer.
Ukraine has a limited stockpile of interceptor missiles for the U.S.-made Patriot systems, the sole air defence system in its arsenal able to shoot down ballistic missiles, making large volleys like Wednesday’s hard to stop, even as Ukraine has stepped up deep strikes on Russian oil refineries and energy infrastructure.
In the wider Kyiv region around the capital, 14 people were killed and 27 wounded, with fires at multiple locations in Brovary, Bucha and Fastiv districts, Ukraine’s emergency service said.
Large warehouse fires burned in the city of Brovary and the villages of Velyka Dymerka, Kvitneve and Peremoha.
A fire involving vehicles at an enterprise in Fastiv district was extinguished.
In Bucha district, crews battled a warehouse fire in the village of Chaiky after putting out a separate fire at a logistics facility in Sofiivska Borshchahivka.
In the capital, one person was killed and 15 were wounded, and emergency crews extinguished all fires sparked by the strikes in the Obolonskyi, Sviatoshynskyi, Holosiivskyi and Desnianskyi districts, the Kyiv City Military Administration said.
At least 15 people have been killed, and another 42 are wounded after a huge barrage of missiles sent Kyiv up in flames
Police officers and security guard at the site of the building of a supermarket warehouse hit by a Russian missile strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine, August 5, 2026
People wait at a bus stop as smoke rising in the distance following massive Russian ballistic missile and drone strikes in Kyiv on August 5, 2026
Serhii Beskrestnov, an adviser to Ukraine’s president on defence technology development, said the war of attrition has entered a new phase.
‘The enemy is attacking everything indiscriminately – retail warehouses, food storage facilities, logistics hubs, enterprises, building materials warehouses,’ he said on Facebook.
It comes after Ukraine urged its allies to provide more supplies of U.S.-made Patriot missile interceptors to protect its airspace against Russian ballistic attacks.
On Saturday, Russian attacks on Kyiv and its suburbs killed 10 people and wounded more than 30, while Ukrainian drones sank a huge Russian container ship in the Black Sea.
Drone strikes from both sides have become a regular occurrence, with Ukraine intensifying its attacks on civilian infrastructure, including oil and gas facilities.
Five people were killed and 10 others wounded in the Moscow region on Tuesday morning in strikes that targeted depots of the Russian e-commerce giant Wildberries.
Ukraine, meanwhile, expressed outrage over a video showing a man chased by a drone in Kherson city, calling it a deliberate ‘hunt’ and ‘safari’ targeting civilians.
Video footage filmed at a market in Kherson on Tuesday morning showed the FPV pilot relentlessly pursuing the innocent food seller before going in for the kill.
The man, 52, is seen running around his van and attempting to hide behind it as the drone circles overhead.
The terrifying high-pitched whirring of the drone destroyed the peace of the outdoor market, which was already being set up with stall covers, boxes of goods and vehicles being unloaded.
A fire breaks out following Russian ballistic missile strikes in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv on Wednesday morning
Footage shows the city of Kyiv in Ukraine rocked by explosions overnight
Flames fill the sky in Kyiv in the early hours of the morning, with at least one person killed
After teasing the civilian and pursuing him round his van several times, the drone then honed in and dropped suddenly towards the ground, triggering a large explosion.
Despite Putin’s weapon heading directly for the market seller, Ukrainian authorities confirmed he survived the attack.
He suffered blast injuries, shrapnel wounds and concussion but is expected to recover.
Commentators described it as the latest ‘human safari’ attack by Moscow – a deliberate campaign targeting civilians intended to terrorise Ukraine’s population.
UN human rights monitors have voiced concern about rising numbers of civilian casualties, which have reached their highest level since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said a lack of ballistic missile interceptors ‘only encourages Russia to launch such attacks that take human lives’.
He met his US counterpart Donald Trump last Tuesday, partly to lobby Washington for licences to produce Patriots domestically.
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