Russia intensifies air attacks on Kyiv as its ground advance slows

A Russian drone struck a munitions store in the village of Myla, about 5km west of Kyiv, at around 8.10pm on 28 August 2026. The fire it started set off the ammunition inside. President Volodymyr Zelensky said on 30 August that 38 people had been killed, 20 injured and four were still missing. Among the dead was Taras Didych, head of the Dmytrivka community, who had reached the scene as a first responder. It is the deadliest single strike of the year, exceeding the 31 people killed in Kyiv on 2 July.

The strike fell on the second of three days of near-continuous bombardment. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington research group, described a combined drone and missile series lasting more than 28 hours across 28 and 29 August, directed mainly at Kyiv city and the surrounding oblast.

The air war has intensified as the ground war has slowed, and the two are connected.

The air war is at record levels

Russian forces fired 376 missiles at Ukraine in July, the highest monthly total of the full-scale war and more than double June’s 161, according to AFP’s analysis of Ukrainian air force reporting, as published by Le Figaro. Of those, 126 were ballistic. Military analysts cited in the same account estimate Russia fired roughly 200 to 300 ballistic missiles across the whole of 2024. Drone volumes peaked earlier: Ukraine’s air force recorded 8,150 drones and 211 missiles in May, a record.

The pattern is not one-sided. Ukrainian forces struck Russian oil refineries at least 21 times in August, the highest figure for any month of the war. Zelensky said on 29 August that Ukraine was averaging more than 300 long-range strikes a day and set a target of 1,000. On 30 August Russia’s defence ministry said on Telegram that it had begun preparations for massive strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, presenting this as a response to Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilian and energy sites.

The ground war is not

ISW assessed that Russian forces took an average of 2.9 sq km a day over the first third of 2026, against 9.76 sq km a day in the same period of 2025. In April, ISW recorded a net Russian loss of 116 sq km. Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Ukrainian forces recovered about 600 sq km in the first five months of the year.

The most recent weeks are disputed. For 14 July to 11 August, the Ukrainian monitoring group DeepState recorded a net Russian gain of 33 sq miles. Russia Matters’ reading of ISW data for the identical window found a net Russian loss of nine sq miles. ISW itself cautions that year-on-year comparisons are complicated by Russian infiltration tactics, under which Russian forces hold ground less firmly than in territory they have seized outright. On 22 August, ISW characterised the exchange as massive casualties for minimal frontline gains.

What the strike campaign has done to Russia

Ukraine’s refinery campaign has produced measurable effects. Russian Forbes calculated that damaged refineries account for 54 per cent of national refining capacity. Figures from EA Analytics indicate Russia processed an average of 3.8m barrels a day in August, against the 5.3m to 5.5m typical of summer. On 29 August the government extended its diesel export ban for producers to 30 September. Petrol chains in Moscow, among them Gazprom Neft and Tatneft, imposed limits of 40 to 60 litres a vehicle, with AI-95 petrol reaching 120 roubles (about $1.50) a litre.

This is strain, not collapse. President Vladimir Putin said on 19 August that Russian GDP growth was running at about 1 per cent, acknowledging that external pressure and what the Kremlin calls terrorist attacks were affecting it. Official data show 1.3 per cent year-on-year growth in the second quarter, Russia’s first return to growth since 2023.

Washington reads the weakness as a danger

CIA director John Ratcliffe travelled to Moscow on 25 August and met the SVR foreign intelligence chief, Sergey Naryshkin, and the FSB director, Alexander Bortnikov. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he did not meet Putin. Axios reported that Ratcliffe floated a trilateral Trump–Putin–Zelensky summit and sought to establish whether Russia’s intelligence chiefs could move Putin back towards negotiations.

CNN reported that US intelligence assessed before the trip that Russia’s weakening position could prompt it to take military action against a NATO member — raising the costs of supporting Ukraine to force a settlement on favourable terms. President Donald Trump publicly rejected that reading, saying Putin was not going to attack NATO territory. Latvia and its Baltic neighbours said their own threat assessment was unchanged after the visit.

The war is already crossing borders. A Russian Kh-101 cruise missile fell near Tarnawa-Kolonia in Poland’s Lublin region on 30 July, confirmed by Polish deputy defence minister Cezary Tomczyk. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said there was no indication Poland had been deliberately targeted.

Ukraine’s own position is not comfortable

Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Office of the President, said on 28 August that Ukraine must mobilise at least 30,000 people a month simply to hold its current strength, and that expecting the war to end soon was unrealistic.

Myla was also the second ammunition detonation near Kyiv in under two months. A Russian strike on Vyshneve on 6 July set off a depot run by a company within the state conglomerate Ukroboronprom; Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko put that toll at seven killed and 29 injured. Prosecutors have opened negligence investigations in both cases.

What to watch

is escalating in the one domain where it retains a decisive material advantage, while its advance on the ground has slowed and its refining base is being degraded faster than it can repair it. On the evidence, the intensity is a function of the stalemate rather than a departure from it.

Two dates will test that. Russia holds State Duma elections on 20 September, after which ISW expects some form of involuntary reserve call-up. And Russia’s defence ministry has now signalled the start of another winter campaign against Ukraine’s grid.