“We look at how dire the situation has become inside Kyiv.
With the air conflict has intensified. Ukraine launches drone attacks deep into Russian territory, and Moscow rains ballistic missiles down on Kyiv.
That’s not going well for Ukraine, which is out of the defensive weapons that keep Kyiv safe from Russian salvos.
A Russian attack there yesterday left at least 15 people dead and around 40 injured. You could hear the thunder of the exploding missiles deep below ground, in a subway station where civilians had taken shelter, reported The Times’s Constant Méheut. Some 40,000 residents slept in the subway system that night, the local authorities said.
Russia “had been preparing for a long time,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media, and its attack combined “different types of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones.” He had said earlier that the number of air defense missiles supplied by Ukraine’s Western allies had dropped threefold from the year before.
That number’s not likely to rise any time soon, Constant wrote a few weeks ago:
Western allies are more hesitant to give up missiles they may need for their own defense as conflict rages on multiple fronts, including in the Middle East, where fighting has whittled global stockpiles.
Even if Ukraine’s partners did heed Mr. Zelensky’s call, they could not fully meet the country’s needs. Russia produces ballistic missiles faster than the West can make the interceptors designed to stop them.
A city under siege
The missiles have also destroyed food warehouses and distribution centers. For the first time since 2022 events, report Kim Barker and Oleksandra Mykolyshyn, the shelves of Kyiv’s grocery stores are going bare.
Supplies of dairy products, meat and fresh produce have dwindled. At one shop in Kyiv, the reporters discovered, “the only produce remaining were six mushy avocados and the papery skins of a few onions and garlic bulbs.”
One shopper they spoke with called the situation a nightmare. She had only bread and herring in her cart. “I’m horrified,” she said. “I wanted to buy sugar, but I looked and there wasn’t any. And there’s an entire section over there that’s completely empty. I didn’t even go in there. I don’t want to look at it and upset myself.”
1. A City Under Siege. Sifton, Sam. New York Times (Online) New York Times Company. Aug 21, 2026.
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