Overnight barrage on Putin’s birthday devastates residential building in Pryluky and hits multiple cities, as Zelenskyy brands the attack a ‘deliberate choice of terror’.
Russian forces launched a large-scale combined missile and drone assault across Ukraine overnight into Wednesday, killing at least 28 people, among them five children, and wounding around 100 others, according to Ukrainian officials. The deadliest single strike flattened part of a five-storey residential building in the northern town of Pryluky, in Chernihiv region, where families were asleep.
Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi put the nationwide death toll at 28. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said 25 people had been killed and about 100 injured, describing the barrage as one of Russia’s “most vile strikes.” He noted that the attack coincided with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 74th birthday. “This is the kind of birthday present that Putin gave himself: the killing of children, the killing of people,” Zelenskyy said in his evening address.
Russian Strike Kills Children in Ukraine:
In Pryluky, a Russian missile-one of several cruise missiles that struck the town-destroyed roughly half of an apartment block, reducing floors of flats to a smoking pile of concrete and twisted metal. Ukrainian authorities reported that 19 or 20 people died there, including five children. Three of the children were one-year-olds-named by Zelenskyy as Oleksandr, Kyrylo and Serhii-and an eight-year-old boy named Maksym was also killed. A fifth child’s body was recovered later in the day. At least seven other children were among the dozens wounded in the town. Rescue teams worked through the day and into the evening, pulling 15 survivors from the rubble.
Further deaths were reported in other cities. Two people were killed in Kyiv’s Darnytskyi district in a fire caused by an air attack, according to Mayor Vitali Klitschko. Two more died when missiles struck high-rise buildings in Kremenchuk in the central Poltava region, and two others were killed in Oleksandriya. Industrial facilities and energy infrastructure were also damaged in several regions.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched approximately 130 drones (including jet-powered models), 48 cruise missiles and an unspecified number of ballistic missiles. Ukrainian defences claimed to have shot down or suppressed the majority of the incoming weapons, but multiple impacts were recorded. Zelenskyy had publicly warned the previous evening that intelligence indicated Russia was preparing a “massive” strike, particularly against energy targets.
Russia’s Defence Ministry described the operation as a “massive strike” using high-precision land-, sea- and air-launched weapons and drones against military-industrial facilities in Kyiv and other regions. Moscow has repeatedly said it does not deliberately target civilians, a claim Ukrainian officials and many international observers reject in light of repeated strikes on residential areas.
Ukraine Faces Renewed Russian Strikes Ahead of Winter:
The attack fits a pattern of intensified Russian long-range strikes aimed at degrading Ukraine’s energy grid and industrial capacity ahead of winter, while also placing sustained pressure on civilian morale. Ukrainian officials said the scale of the assault, coming after a clear public warning, underscored continuing shortages of advanced air-defence systems, particularly interceptors capable of stopping ballistic missiles. Zelenskyy renewed calls for additional defence packages from Western partners.
Residents in Pryluky described waking to the sound of incoming missiles and the sudden destruction of neighbouring flats. “We were at home, sleeping,” one resident told reporters. “Our windows blew out. Thank God, we covered the child with our bodies.” Emergency services continued searching the ruins as the death toll climbed throughout the day.
The strikes come more than four and a half years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Both sides continue to exchange long-range attacks while diplomatic efforts toward a ceasefire remain stalled. Ukrainian authorities have declared local mourning in the hardest-hit areas and are providing support to survivors and the families of the dead.