Russian strikes kill at least 15 across Ukraine

Russian missiles and drones struck cities across Ukraine overnight, killing at least 15 people and damaging apartment buildings, Ukrainian officials said Wednesday. The deadliest reported strike hit a five-storey building in Pryluky, where rescuers searched the rubble for survivors.

President Volodymyr Zelensky described the assault as one of Russia’s “most vile” attacks. He said Russia fired 70 missiles as well as drones, and that Ukrainian forces shot down only “some” of the missiles. Ukraine’s air force gave a separate breakdown, saying Russia launched 130 drones, 48 cruise missiles and an unspecified number of ballistic missiles, according to Al Jazeera. It said air defences downed 161 targets.

“One of the key targets was our energy infrastructure. The Russians wanted to strike painfully and demonstratively,” Zelensky said. He did not say whether energy facilities were hit. He renewed his call for allies to provide Ukraine with air defence support packages.

In Pryluky, in the northern Chernihiv region, Zelensky initially reported five deaths and 26 injuries, including five children, according to the BBC. Chernihiv regional police later raised the death toll to nine after emergency workers recovered the bodies of three children. The search continued amid fears that people remained trapped beneath the building.

Zelensky described the strike on Pryluky as a “birthday ‘gift’ to Putin,” who turns 74 on Wednesday. He also reported two deaths in Kyiv, two in Oleksandriya and two more after strikes damaged five apartment buildings in Dnipro and four high-rises in Kremenchuk. Eight people were injured in the Dnipro and Kremenchuk strikes, he said. Other areas hit included Zaporizhzhia and the regions of Poltava and Kharkiv.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the two people killed in the capital died in a fire caused by an air attack in the Darnytskyi neighbourhood, according to Al Jazeera. Ukrainian police posted images of what they said was an unexploded Russian Iskander missile in Kyiv. BBC Verify confirmed the images were genuine and showed apparent missile fragments on open ground surrounded by apartment buildings.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said its forces had carried out a “massive strike” against Ukrainian military-industrial facilities, according to Al Jazeera. The ministry said its targets included sites connected to missile and drone production, as well as port and ship-repair infrastructure and vessels it said served Ukraine’s armed forces.

Zelensky said Ukraine had struck four targets in Russia over the previous 24 hours, including two oil facilities and a training ground in the Perm, Samara and Astrakhan regions. “There is also a response in the Black Sea,” he wrote, without elaborating.

The BBC reported that footage from Tuesday showed smoke rising from an oil tanker off Sochi. Russia’s transport ministry said unmanned boats attacked the Liberian-flagged Aframax Rio and that its crew was rescued.

Separately, Bulgaria halted a search for the missing crew of a ship that sank after a reported drone strike in the Black Sea, the BBC reported. Bulgaria’s prime minister said a second vessel carrying grain was also hit within the country’s exclusive economic zone; all 18 crew members were rescued. Bulgaria has not said who was responsible. Zelensky blamed Russia for the attacks on the vessels, while Moscow had not commented on those incidents.