After deadly Kyiv strike, Ukraine warns interceptor shortage is costing lives

At the Kvitneva railway station near Kyiv, workers lift white body bags from the pockmarked platform and carry them to waiting ambulances.

Shoes, glasses and some pieces of clothing mark the spot where eight people were killed during Russia’s latest massive aerial attack on Ukraine.

Overnight, Moscow fired 115 drones and 24 ballistic missiles. Most of the drones were shot down, but Kyiv’s depleted air defences did not intercept any of the missiles.

Twenty-one people were killed and dozens more were injured.

As the medics leave the scene, another team moves in quickly to repair the power lines above the track so train services can resume. This is the rapid recovery and clear-up Ukrainians have become all too familiar with.

The latest Russian barrage destroyed storage and logistics facilities – from online retailer warehouses to a postal sorting centre.

In Kvitneva, it is not clear if the target was the railway itself or the warehouse beside it, which was also hit and was still smouldering hours later. Down the road, another warehouse was still ablaze more than 12 hours after the attack.

The attack started just after midnight, with very little warning. It was one of the most intense nights of bombardment Kyiv has endured in recent months.

Nearby, Anastasiia Dudley’s house was almost totally destroyed but she and her mother survived – shaken but unharmed.

Anastasiia has lived through years of war – but Wednesday was her “scariest night” since the start of Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine in February 2022, she says.

She looks up at the precariously leaning walls of her house, which she says was hit by a drone a few hours before missiles struck the warehouse and the station nearby.

“You see two floors – the first and the second, but it was a three-floor house with a roof,” she says. The building’s top floor has been sliced off. “So no roof, no third floor, and extensive damage on the second floor. It’s pretty unstable”.

Ukrainians have lived through four and a half years of war, but now air defences are increasingly vulnerable, resulting in dozens of deaths at a time.

For years, Ukraine has relied on US supplies of Patriot interceptor missiles to shoot down Russian ballistic missiles.

But the US has used many of its stockpiles during its war with Iran and is reluctant to give up more. After initially offering Ukraine the license to make Patriots in early July, last week President Donald Trump denied the US had agreed to “give away that kind of technology”.

Yet without them, Ukraine’s skies are wide open.

“Ballistic missile interceptors could have saved the lives of those killed today,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

Last week, following another deadly attack in which only one out of 27 missiles was shot down, he warned that a shortage of interceptors “encourages Russia to launch such attacks that take human lives”.

On Wednesday again Zelensky made a direct link between the delays in supply and the “horrific casualties and destruction” witnessed regularly across Ukraine.

“Quite literally every single day, the lives of people here in Ukraine depend on the decisiveness of our partners in Europe and America,” he said later, adding he had spoken to Nato chief Mark Rutte about getting interceptor missiles.

Ukraine has an undisclosed number of Patriot systems, but it is the Patriot interceptor missiles which are in short supply.

It takes at least two to bring down each incoming ballistic missile and the system has a range of around 160km (99m), so effectively placing units can be difficult.

Russia, meanwhile, uses on average between 20 and 30 ballistic missiles each time it carries out large-scale strikes on Ukraine.

Ukrainian military expert and former intelligence service officer Ivan Stupak says the lack of interceptors left Kyiv in a situation comparable to having a supercar in the garage but no petrol.

“Imagine you own a Lamborghini but have no fuel,” he tells the BBC. “You have one of the best cars in the world, but you can’t drive anywhere… The situation with Patriot is similar. The systems are there, but there are no interceptor missiles.”

A lack of Patriot missiles leaves the whole country exposed – including the valuable Patriot systems.

“Now the question is how to protect the systems themselves from being destroyed,” Stupak says. “Because they could very well become priority targets for the Russian Federation.

“Until we receive more interceptor missiles, these systems need to be relocated or concealed somehow so the Russians cannot detect and destroy them. Right now they’re extremely vulnerable.”