Russian Barrage Kills Eight in Ukraine as Sumy Is Struck
Russia launched another mass overnight attack on Ukraine — ballistic and cruise missiles and more than 120 drones — killing at least eight people. Glide bombs struck a crowded part of Sumy, killing five, while two died in Odesa and a rescue worker was killed in the Kharkiv region. Ukraine’s air force said it downed most of the drones but not the ballistic missiles, and President Zelensky again pressed allies to deliver the air defences promised at this week’s NATO summit faster.
With the world’s attention on the Gulf, Russia’s war on Ukraine grinds on at undiminished intensity, and the glide bombs that killed civilians in Sumy are the weapon Kyiv can least counter: cheap, heavy and released from aircraft standing off beyond the front. Zelensky’s plea is specifically for the interceptors and the licence to build Patriots agreed at Ankara, and the gap between promise and delivery is measured in the lives lost to the ballistic missiles Ukraine cannot stop. Ukraine’s reply remains asymmetric and economic — its drones struck more than twenty fuel tankers overnight, part of a campaign hitting dozens of vessels a week to bleed Russia’s oil revenue. The two conflicts are now linked through that oil: a Gulf shock and a tanker war together threaten to drive prices higher still. Watch whether the promised air defences arrive before the next barrage.