Russia fires 16 ballistic missiles at Kyiv in one of its broadest attacks in months, and Zelensky says Ukraine got no warning from its partners

The attack came in waves, just before 11 at night, again at about 3 in the morning, and again near 7, and the first wave arrived without the warning Kyiv has learned to rely on. Russia fired 16 ballistic missiles at Kyiv and the surrounding region overnight and more than 200 drones across the country, at targets from Kharkiv and Dnipro in the east to Odesa in the south and Volyn and Rivne in the west. President Zelensky said more than 10 energy facilities were damaged and power was cut to more than half a million households, as of October 19.

In the capital, a woman of 21 was killed in the Desnianskyi district, where a building caught fire and a metro station was damaged, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. The stations at Chernihivska and Lisova were closed for repairs. In the Solomianskyi district a 25 storey residential building was badly damaged and a medical center was hit, its windows, doors, ceilings and equipment wrecked, with no patients inside at the time. Two more people were killed in the industrial city of Kryvyi Rih. The injury count in Kyiv is given as three by the mayor and eight by the State Emergency Service, and both figures are on the record unreconciled.

Zelensky made the warning failure the center of his response. Once again there was a Russian ballistic missile attack in several waves overnight, and once again there was no warning from our partners, he wrote. When deliveries of missiles to Ukraine air defence forces are blocked, while Russia receives sanctions relief or deferrals, this is, unfortunately, a denial of reality on the part of our partners. Air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said no information was received before the first ballistic strike, that information did arrive before a second attack, and that Ukrainian and American specialists are investigating why, since this is not the first time it has happened. A United States warning reportedly reached Kyiv at about 3 in the morning, far too late for the first wave.

The American answer came from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, travelling in Uzbekistan for talks with Central Asian leaders. He denied there had been any pause in intelligence sharing, said he did not know exactly what happened last night, and pointed to a software problem involving the early warning system a few nights earlier that the United States European Command had examined. What Zelensky should be focused on, and what we want to be focused on, is bringing an end to this war, Rubio said. Russia defence ministry said its forces carried out a massive strike on military industrial facilities, cruise missile and drone storage sites and data centres in Kyiv and the region.

The exchange of strikes is now running in both directions at a scale neither side was attempting a month ago. Ukraine struck St. Petersburg oil facilities with a drone attack Russia counts at more than 1,000 drones over the weekend, and President Trump has criticised those strikes on Russian oil infrastructure while waiving the new Russia sanctions and giving himself up to 60 days to decide on them. Kyiv says the energy ceasefire the president announced a week ago was observed by Russia 76 times in the breach in a single week. The war the secretary of state wants the focus on ending got measurably larger overnight, and the argument about who failed to see it coming is now part of the war itself.