Russia Pounds Ukraine's Power Grid as Zelenskyy Says Kyiv Got No Warning of Missile Strike

KYIV — Russia fired 16 ballistic missiles and more than 200 drones at Ukraine overnight in one of its broadest air assaults in months, damaging more than ten energy facilities and cutting light, heating and running water to more than half a million people, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday. Ten people were reported killed across the country, and the Ukrainian president aimed his anger as much at his partners as at Moscow: Kyiv, he said, received no advance warning of the strike from the Western intelligence services that have provided it throughout the war.

"Another Russian ballistic missile attack came in several waves overnight, and once again, there was no early warning from our partners," Zelenskyy said on the Telegram messaging app. "When deliveries of missiles for Ukraine's air defence are blocked while Russia is granted relief or delays in sanctions, this is, unfortunately, a denial of reality on the part of our partners." His remarks sharpen a dispute that has been building for weeks over Washington's shifting Ukraine policy, from sanctions waivers for Moscow to open talk of replacing him at the negotiating table.

A Night of Strikes From East to West

The missiles were aimed at Kyiv and the region around the capital, where officials reported two people killed, including a 21-year-old woman, and damage to a metro station, a medical facility, a school and a nonresidential building, according to the State Emergency Service. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko urged residents to remain in shelters as the attack unfolded and confirmed power disruptions across the capital. Two more people were killed in the industrial city of Kryvyi Rih, officials said.

The deadliest single strike hit a park near Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, where a Russian drone attack killed six people, including two children, according to regional governor Oleh Syniehubov. Zelenskyy called the park strike "an act of absolute barbarity." The drone campaign stretched across the map, from Kharkiv and Dnipro in the east to Odesa in the south and Volyn and Rivne in the west, in a pattern designed to stretch Ukrainian air defences thin over the widest possible area.

Russia's Defence Ministry said it had carried out a "massive strike" on military targets, listing a data centre, a logistics hub storing drone and cruise missile components, an industrial facility producing drone parts and a locomotive depot where missiles are stored. Ukraine's largest private energy provider, DTEK, said the attack forced emergency power cuts in several districts of the capital.

The Grid Is the Target, Again

The overnight barrage continues Moscow's autumn campaign against the Ukrainian power system, hitting substations and generation plants ahead of winter in what Kyiv describes as an effort to freeze the country into submission. The scale of the energy damage is tracked alongside the wider economics of the war, including the sanctions and energy trade that now shape both sides' room for manoeuvre. Ukrainian officials said the strike damaged facilities in multiple regions simultaneously, complicating repair work that was still under way from previous attacks.

Air Defence Shortages Bite

Zelenskyy said some vital American deliveries were being delayed at the level of the US Defence Department, and that political agreements on air defence reached with Washington had not been implemented at working level. Ukraine has struggled for months with a critical shortage of American-made Patriot interceptor missiles, the system best able to stop ballistic missiles of the kind fired at Kyiv overnight. Limits on Ukraine's use of Starshield, the military version of the Starlink satellite service, have also constrained its drone operations, the president said.

The complaint lands at a delicate diplomatic moment. Washington has waived sanctions on Russian diesel, signed an order easing measures on Moscow, and is now weighing a proposed summit between Putin, Trump and Xi Jinping that would discuss the war without Ukraine in the room. Zelenskyy has warned that if the United States officially sided with Russia, "we will not prevail, and we will not be able to stand." For the families spending Monday night without heat or water, that argument is no longer abstract: the warning gap over Kyiv and the interceptor gap above it have become the same story.