At least 15 people were killed overnight Wednesday in an extensive Russian missile barrage that struck multiple cities across central and eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fiercely condemned the strikes, calling them “one of the most despicable attacks” and pointing to their deliberate timing coinciding with Russian President VladiPutin’sin’s 74th birthday, remarking that the destruction of a residential building in the city of Pryluky was a “birthday gift for Putin.”
4+According to Ukrainian emergency authorities, Russian forces launched roughly 70 missiles overnight targeting several urban centers, including Kyiv, Dnipro, Kremenchuk, Zaporizhzhia, Oleksandriya, and Pryluky. In Pryluky, a five-story residential apartment block was completely flattened, driving the local death toll to nine, including three young children pulled lifeless from the rubble. Dozens of other civilians, among them children, sustained serious injuries.
4+In Dnipro and Kremenchuk, two additional people were killed and eight wounded when incoming missiles struck multiple apartment buildings. In Kyiv and Oleksandriya, authorities confirmed four more fatalities. Concurrently, the National Police of Ukraine released dramatic footage showing an unexploded Russian Iskander ballistic missile resting in the heart of a residential district in the capital.
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4+Zelensky said one of the primary targets of the coordinated attack was Ukraine’s power grid and energy infrastructure, reiterating his urgent plea to international allies to expedite deliveries of modern air-defense systems. He noted that Ukrainian interception systems could neutralize only a fraction of the incoming missiles.
4+In the meantime, the Ukrainian president reported that Ukrainian armed forces carried out targeted strikes against four military targets inside Russian territory over the past 24 hours, hitting oil production facilities and an army training range. Moscow has not issued a formal comment on the Ukrainian claims.