Russia struck Kyiv overnight on July 6, 2026, with 68 missiles and more than 350 drones, killing 11 people and injuring around 60, hours before NATO leaders were due to convene in Ankara. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy immediately posted on X calling for "strong decisions" at the summit and pointing directly at allied stockpiles as the proximate cause of Ukrainian casualties: "As long as Patriot missiles remain in our allies' stockpiles, Russia is only encouraged to keep vanquishing residential buildings. The United States and Europe have enough strength to stop this terror," The Guardian reported him saying.

Russia claimed its "massive attack" targeted military and energy facilities. Damage to apartment blocks told a different story.

The July 6 attack was the second large-scale bombardment of the capital in less than a week. The overnight strike from July 1 into July 2 involved 74 missiles and 496 drones across an 11-hour assault, according to the Ukrainian Air Force and Euronews. Reuters put the death toll from that strike at at least 30. Zelenskyy, in remarks published on July 5, noted the sequencing deliberately: the attack came "right after America's Independence Day and before the NATO Summit in Ankara," calling it typical of Putin.

The Air Defence Argument

Zelenskyy's core ask has not changed in substance, but the delivery has sharpened. He cited "the insufficient supply of interceptor missiles" as a structural constraint on Ukrainian air defences and appealed to allies to transfer systems rather than hold them in reserve. Ukrainian intelligence, he added, indicates Russia is preparing another massive strike — a warning he flagged on X the day before the July 6 attack.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen backed the position within hours, posting on X that "Ukraine urgently needs more air defence" and would raise it at the Ankara summit. Her characterisation of the overnight barrage — "over 400 drones and missiles attacking the capital" — was somewhat higher than the figures reported by Ukrainian authorities, though both figures describe the same category of saturation attack. Von der Leyen also confirmed the EU had disbursed the first €4 billion under a €90 billion loan facility earmarked partly for advanced drone technology, with more tranches imminent, and said the bloc is "working hard to seal the deal on the 21st sanctions package in the next days."

Sanctions, in this context, are legally binding economic restrictions — asset freezes, trade bans, financial exclusions — designed to raise the cost of war for Russia. Twenty-one packages since February 2022 reflect both the EU's sustained political will and the escalating complexity of closing circumvention routes.

What Ankara Has to Decide

The NATO summit in Ankara opens July 7. Zelenskyy has been laying the groundwork for weeks: in early June he addressed a Ukraine–NATO Council meeting, noting preparations for both the G7 and the Ankara summit were underway. He also held a joint press conference with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in which both committed to continuing work at the summit, and held a phone call with the US President that ended with agreement to continue discussions in Ankara.

The core tension entering the summit is structural. Air defence systems — particularly Patriot batteries and their interceptor missiles — are finite, and NATO members have been weighing their own force-readiness requirements against Ukrainian requests. Zelenskyy's framing explicitly calls that calculus into question: stockpiled interceptors that sit unused while Kyiv is struck, in his argument, serve neither deterrence nor alliance credibility.

Whether Ankara produces new Patriot commitments, acceleration of existing pledges, or a reaffirmation of support without new hardware will define how the summit is read in Kyiv and Moscow alike. The timing of two mass strikes in five days, immediately before allied leaders gather, leaves little ambiguity about what Russia wants the summit's backdrop to be.

Zelenskyy's broader framing, captured in a June address titled "June and July Must Deliver Results For Ukraine and for All of Europe," positioned this summit season as a window for tangible progress — on air defence, on EU integration clusters Ukraine is ready to open, and on the terms of any future security architecture. The pressure from the overnight strikes is, in that sense, both humanitarian and strategic. Eleven people killed in one night; thirty or more in the attack five days prior. The ledger is concrete. The decisions in Ankara are not yet made.