Russian missile and drone strikes killed at least 17 people and wounded dozens more in Kyiv and the surrounding region overnight, authorities said on Wednesday (August 5, 2026).

Kyiv was unable to shoot down any of the missiles launched by Russia, whose intensifying attacks have prompted Kyiv to plead for more U.S.-made Patriot interceptors.

Russia has significantly upped its attacks on the Ukrainian capital in recent months, typically firing salvos of hard-to-intercept ballistic missiles in short blitzes that rock buildings and send booms echoing across the city.

“Ballistic interceptors are what could have saved the lives of those killed today,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, announcing the 17-persion death toll.

A cloud of smoke hovered over the capital at sunrise, AFP journalists saw, after the attacks sparked fires in several locations in the region. Over 40 people were wounded in the capital and its surrounding areas, local authorities said. AFP journalists heard explosions in Kyiv after midnight (2100 GMT Tuesday), following Ukrainian air force warnings of incoming ballistic missiles.

One journalist reported seeing dark smoke and the acrid smell of burning lingering in the air hours later.

‘We were lucky today’

“The night was so terrifying, so hard,” Kyiv resident Natalia Reutska told AFP in the morning after the attack.

“We’ve gotten used to waking up thinking, ‘we were lucky today,’ and that’s very scary,” she added.

Ukraine did shoot down 98 of the 115 drones fired by Russia overnight, the air force said.

But it was unable to shoot down any of the missiles, preliminary statistics from the air force showed.

EU chief Ursula von der Leyen slammed “horrible atrocities” while French President Emmanuel Macron said France would “not give into intimidation” and called to increase sanctions on Russia.

Kyiv can intercept the vast majority of drones, but still relies on supplies from allies to counter missiles.

Mr. Zelenskyy said the number of air defence missiles supplied from allies had dropped threefold compared with 2025.

He has repeatedly warned about critical air defence shortages, as Moscow fired a record number of missiles at Ukraine in July, an AFP analysis of Ukrainian air force data published on Saturday (August 1, 2026) showed.

There has been an uptick in civilian deaths in the conflict throughout 2026, the United Nations has reported, as the four-and-a-half-year war grinds on with no sign of a peace deal.

In Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, a key target for the Kremlin, local authorities on Wednesday (August 5, 2026) ordered hundreds of families with children to leave the major Ukrainian-held city of Kramatorsk.

“This is a difficult but necessary decision. The security situation is deteriorating, so it is unacceptable to leave children under the constant threat of Russian attacks,” Donetsk region governor Vadym Filashkin said.

Train station hit

The Russian attacks overnight mainly targeted warehouses, Kyiv said, with some strikes on infrastructure and a railway station.

Eight people were killed in a strike on a train station on the eastern edge of Kyiv, where an AFP journalist saw several bodies covered with white sheets next to the train tracks.

Logistics centres of the general merchandise chain Epicentr were struck, burning one hub completely to the ground and killing an employee, the company said.

Three people working at a postal sorting centre were also killed, and online retailer Rozetka also said it suffered its third attack this week.

Moscow said it hit “transportation, logistics, and distribution centres in the city of Kyiv and the Kyiv region that were involved in the storage, delivering various weapons and military cargo, as well as in the production and distribution of unmanned aerial vehicles.”

The network of Russian online retailer Wildberries has been hit around a dozen times since mid-July by Ukrainian forces.

The series of strikes killed at least eight people and have knocked out a large chunk of the company’s storage capacity.

Kyiv accuses the e-commerce giant — which employs tens of thousands of people and is sometimes referred to as “Russia’s Amazon” — of storing drone parts and helping the Russian army.

Published – August 05, 2026 10:25 pm IST

People walk near vehicles damaged during Russian missile and drone strikes, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine, on June 2, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Police officers inspect a part of a Russian Kh-55 cruise missile, intercepted during a missile strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in a park in Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 24, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Poland demanded an explanation from Russia on March 24 after one of its missiles strayed briefly into Polish airspace during a massive missile attack on Ukraine, prompting the NATO member to activate F-16 fighter jets.

The incident came as Russia launched its third massive missile attack on Ukraine in the past four days, and the second to target the capital of Kyiv.

The head of Kyiv’s military administration, Serhiy Popko, said Russia used cruise missiles launched from Tu-95MS strategic bombers. An air alert in the capital lasted for more than two hours as rockets entered Kyiv in groups from the north.

He said the attacks were launched from the Engels district in the Saratov region of Russia.

According to preliminary data, there were no casualties or damage in the capital, he said.

Armed Forces Operational Command of Poland, a member of NATO, said in a statement that there was a violation of Polish airspace at 4:23 a.m. (0323GMT) by one of the cruise missiles launched by Russia against towns in western Ukraine.

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The object entered near Oserdów, a village in an agricultural region near the border with Ukraine, and stayed there for 39 seconds, the statement said.

Poland’s Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz later told reporters in a televised news conference that the Russian missile would have been shot down had there been any indication that it was heading towards a target in Poland.

He said that Polish authorities monitored the attack on Ukraine and was in contact with Ukrainian counterparts. Polish and NATO F-16s were activated as part of the strategic response.

He said the missile penetrated Polish airspace about a kilometre or two (0.6 miles to 1.2 miles) as Russia was targeting the region around Lviv in western Ukraine.

“As last night’s rocket attack on Ukraine was one of the most intense since the beginning of the Russian aggression, all the strategic procedures were launched on time and the object was monitored until it left the Polish air space,” he said.

On the diplomatic front, the Polish Foreign Ministry said it would “demand explanations from the Russian Federation in connection with another violation of the country’s airspace.”

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“Above all, we call on the Russian Federation to stop the terrorist air attacks on the inhabitants and territory of Ukraine, end the war, and address the country’s internal problems,” the statement read.

Andrzej Szejna, a deputy Foreign Minister, told the TVN24 broadcaster that the Foreign Ministry intended to summon the Russian ambassador to Poland and hand him a protest note.

Henryk Zdyb, the head of the village of Oserdów, said in an interview with the daily Gazeta Wyborcza that he saw the missile, saying it produced a whistling sound.

“I saw a rapidly moving object in the sky. It was illuminated and flying quite low over the border with Ukraine,” he told the paper.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, there have been a number of intrusions into Polish airspace, triggering worry in the European Union member state and reminding people of how close the war is.

In 2022, two Poles were killed in a missile blast. Western officials blamed those deaths on a Ukrainian air defence missile that went astray but also accused Russia of culpability because it started the war, with the Ukrainian missiles launched in self-defence.

On March 23 night, one person was killed and four wounded in a Ukrainian missile attack on Sevastopol on the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula, city governor Mikhail Razvozhaev said on his Telegram channel.