Russia Strikes Kyiv for Third Time in a Week
Russian ballistic missiles struck Kyiv again overnight — the third attack on the capital in under a week — injuring at least two people, days after a barrage in which Ukraine’s defences intercepted none of the 23 ballistic missiles fired. Ukraine has answered in kind at sea, hitting around a dozen tankers of Russia’s shadow fleet ferrying fuel to Crimea over two days, while Moscow deploys jamming against its Starlink-guided drones.
The zero-of-23 interception figure is the most consequential statistic of the war’s current phase, and Russia keeps publishing it — each strike timed to the summit is a demonstration that Ukraine’s ballistic shield has run out, aimed at the leaders deciding this week whether to replenish it. The shadow-fleet campaign is Ukraine’s asymmetric answer: if the cities cannot be fully defended, the fuel economy sustaining the attacks can be bled. Both escalations converge on today’s Trump-Zelensky meeting. Watch whether it produces Patriot interceptors, a manufacturing licence, or sympathy — Kyiv can only fire the first two.