KYIV – Emergency crews combed through the ruins of a residential building in Pryluky, northern Ukraine, on Thursday after a Russian missile strike killed at least 22 people, including five children, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service reported.
The attack, which hit the Chernihiv region on Wednesday, also left 54 people wounded, among them seven children. Rescuers initially brought 15 survivors to safety from the damaged building, including one child.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a cruise missile struck the building directly. Pryluky is located roughly 150 kilometers (93 miles) east of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.
The strike formed part of a sweeping Russian missile and drone offensive that targeted Kyiv and 12 other Ukrainian regions on Wednesday, the same day as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 74th birthday.
“This is the kind of ‘gift’ Putin gave himself for his birthday,” Zelenskyy said in a video address Wednesday night. “The killing of children, the killing of people.”
Zelenskyy cautioned that Russia could intensify its daily missile and drone attacks as winter draws closer.
Ukraine’s energy provider DTEK said the national grid operator, Ukrenergo, had directed utilities to impose emergency blackouts in Kyiv. The company said those outages were distinct from the scheduled rolling power cuts being used nationwide and would not take place at the same time as those planned shutdowns.
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The latest attacks underscore the continuing long-range air campaign between Russia and Ukraine, even as their ground forces remain largely stalemated along the front more than 4 1/2 years after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion.
Russian drones also struck Kyiv’s Obolonskyi and Desnianskyi districts late Wednesday, according to police.
In Obolonskyi, north of central Kyiv, one drone crashed into a courtyard between apartment blocks. Two people were killed and seven others wounded, including a 12-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl.
Another drone hit a residential building in Desnianskyi, on the capital’s northeastern edge. Two women died, while five people were injured, including girls who were 1 and 6 years old.
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