Russian Missiles Kill at Least 13 in Kyiv as Air Defenses Dwindle

Missile Barrage Shows Russia’s Doubt That Ukraine Can Defend Itself - The New York Times

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Russia-Ukraine War

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Missile Barrage Shows Russia’s Doubt That Ukraine Can Defend Itself

Moscow is taking advantage of Ukraine’s depleted stock of interceptors and is intensifying attacks, worsening the civilian death toll.

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Russia Pummels Kyiv in Deadly Missile Barrage

*More than a dozen people were killed in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, in an overnight Russian missile barrage, Ukrainian officials said on Thursday.

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Anatolii Stepanov/Reuters*

By

Constant Méheut

Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine

Aug. 20, 2026

Updated 10:20 a.m. ET

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For much of the war, Russia’s air assaults followed a battle-tested formula: first, waves of drones to saturate and tie up air defenses; then, once a path was cleared, a salvo of highly destructive missiles.

But as Ukraine now struggles with severe air defense shortages, Russia is going straight for the missiles. Overnight on Thursday, it opened a deadly air assault with a volley of ballistic missiles that resulted in several explosions across Kyiv, the capital, suggesting that some had hit their targets.

The change in tactics is a sign that the Russian military is growing more confident of penetrating Ukrainian defenses, after weeks of attacks that have depleted Ukraine’s stocks of interceptors. In some of Russia’s overnight barrages, the Ukrainian military has been unable to shoot down a single ballistic missile.

The Ukrainian authorities recently stopped releasing data on interception rates of these missiles, concerned about the alarming headlines it was generating. But the impact of Thursday’s attack was evident in the death toll and physical damage. At least 15 people were killed and about 40 injured in strikes that also damaged 30 residential buildings, a school and a children’s hospital, according to Ukrainian officials.

Explosions erupted across the Ukrainian capital shortly before midnight as the bombardment rained down. The thundering reverberated down to a subway station where some of the city’s three million residents had taken shelter, pitching tents and laying mats on the granite platform.

Worried that the gaps in aerial defenses have left them increasingly exposed, many Kyiv residents now spend several nights a week sheltering underground in subway stations and parking lots. Nearly 40,000 residents stayed in the capital’s subway stations overnight, according to the local authorities on Thursday.

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