Kyiv, Sept. 22 -- Ukraine awoke to another brutal arithmetic of the air war on Sunday, with officials tallying a nationwide wave of drones and missiles that struck nine regions overnight while fire crews picked through mangled concrete in Kyiv and Dnipro. The scale is familiar and still staggering, and it lands as NATO states on the eastern flank scramble aircraft and recalibrate air defenses, even as Kyiv signals it will carry the fight deeper into Russian energy infrastructure that bankrolls the campaign.

The new barrage capped a week of escalation that has turned the sky into a weapons corridor. Ukraine's emergency services reported multiple fatalities and dozens wounded after impacts and falling debris ignited fires in residential bl...