Overnight on July 19, Russian forces carried out one of the most massive ballistic missile attacks on Ukraine since the start of the war, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. He said Russia launched more than 40 missiles of various types and 120 drones, with most of the missiles aimed at Kyiv.
In the capital, five districts came under attack. Cars, residential buildings, and non-residential structures caught fire, and the blast wave damaged the ground-level entrance of the Lukyanivska metro station. One missile, according to the report, struck the plant and warehouses of Ukrtac, a company that produces military gear and personal ballistic protection.
Ukrainian authorities said one person was killed in Kyiv and 16 were injured. Two more people were wounded in the Bucha district of the Kyiv region, where shelling also caused fires at warehouses and a logistics site.
Other parts of Ukraine were also hit. In the Zaporizhzhia region, trains came under fire for a second straight day; overnight on July 19, a train attendant was wounded, while passengers had been evacuated during an air raid alert. Two more people were injured in Zaporizhzhia. In the Odesa region, local authorities said a teenager was killed and 12 others were wounded in a strike on a residential area and civilian infrastructure; later, one more person was reported injured in Odesa itself.
In the outskirts of Kharkiv, the reported strike on a postal terminal killed four people and injured about 20. Sumy also came under fire, with reports of one person killed and several wounded, while in the Kherson region one person was killed and two others were injured.
The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed the large-scale missile and drone strike on Ukraine. It said the targets were defense industry facilities and logistics centers in Kyiv and the Kyiv region, as well as infrastructure at the port of Yuzhny in the Odesa region. The ministry accompanied its statement with a threat of further attacks:
“This is definitely not the finale. We are loaded and continuing.”