Ukrainian rescue teams continued searching through rubble Thursday in the northern city of Pryluky, where a Russian missile struck an apartment building Wednesday. Ukraine’s emergency services reported the death toll rose to 22 people, including five children, with 54 wounded—seven of them children. Rescuers pulled 15 survivors, including one child, from the debris immediately after the strike.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said a cruise missile hit the building directly in Pryluky, located about 150 kilometers east of Kyiv. The attack was part of a massive Russian barrage of missiles and drones that hit the capital and dozens of other areas Wednesday—coinciding with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 74th birthday. “This is the ‘gift’ Putin gave himself for his birthday,” Zelensky said in a late-night video address. “Murdering children, murdering people.” Zelensky warned that Russia is expected to escalate its daily missile and drone attacks as winter approaches.
Beyond the Pryluky strike, Russian drones hit Kyiv’s Obolonsky and Desniansky districts late Wednesday night, local police reported. In Obolonsky, in northern Kyiv, a drone struck a courtyard between residential buildings, killing two people and wounding seven, including a 12-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl. In Desniansky, on the northeastern outskirts of the capital, a drone hit an apartment building, killing two women and wounding five, including girls aged one and six.
Ukraine and Russia remain locked in a long-range air war while their armies stay in relative stalemate on the front lines, more than four and a half years since Russia’s full-scale invasion. Ukrainian energy company DTEK announced that national grid operator Ukrenergo ordered emergency power cuts in Kyiv, explaining these are separate from the regular scheduled outages across the country.