Overnight on Tuesday, Russia delivered one of its most devastating aerial assaults on Ukraine since Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022. More than 600 drones and 73 missiles struck civilian infrastructure across multiple cities, killing at least 22 people. Residential buildings and other civilian infrastructure sustained heavy damage across eight Kyiv districts, with at least four people killed and 63 injured in the capital alone. Their number included three children.
Before this onslaught, Russia warned foreign diplomats that a massive aerial assault was coming, advising them to leave the Ukrainian capital. The intimidation failed to produce the intended effect, however. Neither European nor American diplomats left Kyiv, and Western missions called out the warnings as an attempt to sow panic and isolate Ukraine.
But far from a show of strength, these attacks underline how Russia is losing the war. According to battlefield analysis conducted by the Institute for the Study of War, Ukrainian forces have advanced in two directions. They are enabled, at least in part, by mounting command-and-communications problems within the Russian military. These have been compounded after SpaceX cut the Russian army’s illicit access to the Starlink satellite system.
