Dispatches from Ukraine. Day 1595.
NATO 2026 Summit.
As leaders have gathered in Ankara for the 36th NATO summit on July 7th and 8th to discuss the Russian War in Ukraine and defense spending, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has argued that Ukraine should be allowed to join NATO. He stated that it would be wrong to exclude a country that had developed advanced technical capabilities and built strong defenses in its long struggle against the Russian invasion.
The Ukrainian president said his country had developed almost all the weapons it needed, and now only required European help in developing an alternative to the US Patriots to protect against ballistic missile attack.
The alliance is due to adopt a joint declaration that is also expected to include military aid pledges worth €140 billion ($160 billion) for Ukraine.
Russia Pummels Ukraine amid Kyiv’s Deepest-Ever Strike into Siberia
KYIV, UKRAINE – JULY 06: A girl hold to her mother near the residential building damaged during the Russian attack In Kyiv, Ukraine, on July 06, 2026. (Photo by Stringer/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Anadolu via Getty Images
Russia launched a massive overnight attack on Kyiv in the early hours of July 6, hammering Ukraine’s capital with 68 ballistic and cruise missiles alongside 351 drones and decoys. The attack, which President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had warned of on July 5, citing intelligence reports, appeared to be a calculated show of force on the eve of NATO’s summit in Ankara, Turkey, on July 7-8.
The heaviest damage was in Kyiv, where the city administration reported at least 18 people killed and more than 50 wounded. Rescue crews fanned out across more than 20 strike sites, recording the worst destruction in the Podil and Darnytskyi districts.
In the historic, central Podil district, a ballistic missile ripped through a nine-story apartment block, obliterating flats from the fifth to the ninth floors and leaving the upper section of the building hanging open; firefighters rescued 17 residents from the building and evacuated another 28 from the upper floors by ladder.
In the southeastern Darnytskyi district, falling debris damaged another 25-story residential building and sparked a blaze in a 30-story tower. Elsewhere in the city, thick black smoke covered Kyiv’s skyline after strikes sparked fires in several other districts. In Vyshneve, a town five miles from Kyiv International Airport, a Russian strike on an ammunition depot triggered hours of secondary explosions, forcing 500 residents to evacuate.
In total, the Ukrainian government reported at least 28 people killed and close to 100 others injured.
The Ukrainian Air Force reported bringing down 37 cruise missiles and 326 drones, but admitted failing to intercept any of the 29 ballistic missiles fired by Russia. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attributed the nil interception rate to a critical shortage of interceptor missiles, referring implicitly to Patriot missiles, the only system in Ukraine’s hands capable of shooting down ballistic missiles.
In a separate interview with the Financial Times recorded on Monday, President Zelenskyy argued that the “battle in the sky” would determine the outcome of the near-stalemate war. Having denied Moscow victory on land and driven much of Russia’s fleet from the Black Sea with its novel naval drones, Ukraine had entered the conflict’s new phase. “Today, I believe victory in this war belongs to whoever is smarter,” he declared.
The Ukrainian President nevertheless described anti-ballistic air defense as his country’s greatest vulnerability. He pointed to the grim shortage of Patriot PAC-3 missiles, saying deliveries sometimes arrived
Ukraine’s Attacks Inside Russia.
In the early hours of July 6, Ukraine pounded the Omsk oil refinery in what seems to be Kyiv’s deepest strike against Russia. It’s Russia’s largest refinery with an annual refining capacity of 22 million tonnes, located in Western Siberia, some 1,550 miles from Ukraine (Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces claimed an even greater strike range of 1,865 miles). It was the last of Russia’s ten biggest refineries to have so far escaped drone attacks.
The attack on the Omsk refinery is a continuation of Ukraine’s long-range campaign, designed to sap Russia’s military machine, that has reached an unprecedented intensity in recent months. According to the Financial Times, Ukrainian forces struck Russian refineries at least 194 times in the first half of 2026, an elevenfold increase compared to last year. The successful hits climbed to a record 16 this May.
Such an unprecedented pace of the campaign has led to Russia’s worst fuel crisis in decades, forcing more than half of the country’s regions to impose restrictions on fuel sales and leaving drivers facing long lines at gas stations.
Kyiv’s growing success is, in part, explained by a surge in drone production, which supports its broader long-range campaign. Moscow claimed to have intercepted 389 drones on July 4 and 519 on July 6 (among the largest single-night barrages of the war). But Ukrainian officials tacitly credit American intelligence assistance, which helps chart flight paths that evade Russian air defenses.
This article was originally published on Forbes.com