BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts.

Hello and welcome to News Hour from the World Service of the BBC coming live from London.

This is Owen Bennett Jones.

Now, it's been a very rough night in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. There were hundreds

of drones and dozens of missiles. Retaliation for a Ukrainian drone attack on Russian occupied parts of

Lahansk region. The extent to which the four-year conflict is now a stalemate is controversial.

Some Western analysts of the conflict say that the period of

gradual Russian advances is being superseded by a period of stalemate. For all that, European leaders

have strongly criticised the overnight attack on Ukraine. But of course, that's a limited relevance

to the people under the bombs who have to cope with it all.

The BBC's Jonathan Beale is in Kiev. What is it like?

Well, I've been here for a few heavy air attacks in Kiev throughout the past four years,

and this was, I think, the loudest. You could feel

the explosions reverberate around the city. You could watch the missiles going in, those that

penetrated Ukraine's air defence. I think it's important to say Ukraine's air defences have improved.

They are much better at taking out drones.

They've got these drone interceptors which are having a huge success rate. I think more than

triple the number of drones being taken down. These are the long one-way attack, Shahi drones,

that Russia uses. But when it comes to missiles,

specifically ballistic missiles, there is only effectively one weapon that Ukraine has, which is in

short supply, and that is the US made Patriot batteries and specifically a missile called PAC-3,

and it doesn't have that many of them.

...