Nine dead as Russia and Ukraine trade drone and missile salvos

Ukraine is particularly vulnerable to Russian ballistic missiles due to a critical shortage of Patriot munitions.

Russian drones and missiles killed four people in Ukraine overnight, while Ukrainian attacks on Russia and Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine killed five.

Three people were killed in Russian attacks on Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region overnight, including two at an “industrial enterprise” in the city of Kryvyi Rih, regional officials said on Sunday.

In the southern city of Kherson, a drone attack killed a 48-year-old, Mayor Yaroslav Shanko reported.

Russia has escalated attacks in recent weeks, taking advantage of Ukraine’s critical shortage of munitions for its Patriot air defence system, which has rendered it largely unable to intercept ballistic missiles flying at several times the speed of sound.

NATO countries pledged at their summit in Ankara last week to provide more Patriot munitions to Ukraine, and President Donald Trump said he was willing to give Kyiv a license to manufacture the US missiles domestically.

At least 25 heads of state dubbed the “Coalition of the Willing” are due to meet in Paris on Monday to discuss how to support Ukraine and pressure Russia to end the war.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian strikes on the Russian-occupied town of Enerhodar killed four people and injured four others, Alexei Likhachev, head of the Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom, said on Sunday. Enerhodar, home to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, fell to Russian forces within weeks of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

A long-range Ukrainian drone strike also killed a man in Russia’s Samara region, officials said.