Russian strikes kill 12 in Kyiv, including railway workers, as Zelenskyy cites Patriot shortage

Russian forces killed at least 12 people and injured 17 others, including two children, in a sixth consecutive night of drone and missile strikes on Kyiv and the surrounding region, Ukrainian officials said on 1 September. Eight of the dead were in the capital, among them six railway workers at a depot of the state-owned Ukrzaliznytsia company, and four died in the town of Boryspil when a residential building was hit.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia used a "significant number of jet-powered drones and ballistic missiles" and blamed a shortage of US-made Patriot interceptors for the high casualties. "Russia always plans its strikes specifically to cause as much destruction to people's lives as possible, and it succeeds only when air defence capabilities are insufficient," he wrote on social media. The attacks came after 38 people were killed on 28 August when a Russian drone struck an ammunition store in Myla, 15 km west of Kyiv, causing hours of secondary explosions (BBC News).

Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, chief executive of Ukrainian Railways, said six of the seven people killed at the depot were employees. Another rail worker was hospitalised. The depot is on the left bank of Kyiv, a key logistics hub for the state railway company. Fires were reported in three city districts, and nearly 350 rescue workers worked through the night, according to Zelenskyy (The Guardian).

Ukraine's air force said Russia attacked 28 locations, focusing on Kyiv, Odesa and their surroundings. Air defence shot down five Iskander ballistic missiles, two Banderol and five Kalibr cruise missiles, and 187 out of 218 drones. Officials no longer disclose the total number of missiles fired. The sustained barrage has left Kyiv "chronically short" of air defence systems, a problem exacerbated by delays in Western deliveries, particularly of Patriot interceptors (The Guardian).

Beyond Kyiv, Russian strikes on 1 September hit a civilian business in Sumy's Zarichnyi district with jet-powered UAVs, injuring two men aged 54 and 46, according to Serhii Kryvosheienko, head of the Sumy City Military Administration (Ukrainska Pravda). In Zaporizhzhia, a drone attacked a fire and rescue vehicle on its way to extinguish a house fire caused by earlier Russian strikes, injuring four firefighters. The State Emergency Service of Ukraine reported that the first responders were taken to hospital with injuries of varying severity (Ukrainska Pravda).

On 2 September, a Russian drone hit an Ukrnafta petrol station in Odesa Oblast, destroying the main building and canopy and damaging equipment. No one was injured, but Ukrnafta CEO Bohdan Kukura called the strike "terror against the civilian population," noting that more than 300 petrol stations in Ukraine have been damaged or destroyed by Russian attacks over the past six months (Ukrainska Pravda).

The attacks have also disrupted energy infrastructure, with Zelenskyy saying "thousands" of families in Odesa region were left without electricity and a border crossing with Romania was deliberately damaged. Russia's military claimed its "massive strike using high-precision weapons" targeted Ukraine's "military-industrial and fuel-energy" facilities. One person was killed in Ukrainian strikes on Russia's western Belgorod region, acting Governor Aleksandr Shuvaev said (BBC News).

The sustained assault on Kyiv comes as EU defence ministers met informally in Wicklow, Ireland, with discussions expected to include the Russian threat and potential attribution of recent incidents in Germany and Poland to Moscow. The strikes underscore the ongoing vulnerability of Ukrainian civilians and critical infrastructure despite Western air defence support.