New Delhi, July 19 -- 30 in the morning. Over the next hour, five of Kyiv's administrative districts absorbed strikes from a combined barrage of 31 ballistic missiles and at least eight Zircon hypersonic projectiles, leaving vehicle fires in commercial compounds, a three-story administrative wing burning in the Shevchenkivskyi district, and at least seven people in hospitals or receiving treatment at the scene.

The overnight attack on Sunday was Kyiv's eighth Russian aerial assault in July, arriving one day after Ukrainian drone strikes killed nine people in Kotovsk, deep inside Russia's Tambov region, and wounded at least 38 across several Moscow-area cities. The exchange illustrated an escalatory pattern in which neither side's strikes...