Kiev, Oct 7. (dpa/GNA) – At least 25 people, including five children, were killed and more than 100 injured, in a major wave of Russian attacks across Ukraine on Wednesday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
Russia used a combination of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and combat drones in the assault, which began overnight on the day Russian President Vladimir Putin turned 74 and continued with fresh attacks on the Ukrainian capital Kiev later in the day.
Zelensky described the assault as a “birthday gift for Putin.” In the northern city of Pryluky alone, at least 19 people were killed and 55 others injured, when a five-storey residential building was hit, Zelensky said.
Five children were among those killed and another five children were injured. Authorities feared people could still be trapped under the rubble in the city, around 120 kilometres from Kiev.
Kiev was also a major target of the overnight assault, with numerous explosions heard across the city in the early hours of the morning.
The city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, reported at least two deaths in the capital on Wednesday morning, after bodies were found in the rubble of garages in the eastern Darnytsia district. Two other people were rescued alive.
Non-residential buildings were hit in the Obolon district, while warehouses were struck in the Podil district, Klitschko said.
A fresh Russian attack later in the day killed another person in the capital, he said.
Elsewhere, 47 people were reported injured in a Russian drone attack on the industrial city of Kremenchuk. In the central Kirovohrad region, authorities said two people had died in an attack on a facility, which they did not describe in detail.
Three people were reportedly injured. The industrial cities of Dnipro and Zaporizhzhya were also reportedly subjected to heavy attacks, while fatalities were reported from the city of Oleksandriya in central Ukraine.
Zelensky said Russia had launched 70 ballistic and cruise missiles of various types during the attacks.
The Ukrainian Air Force reported that 39 of them had been intercepted. One of the main targets was Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, Zelensky said.
Ukraine fears Russia is seeking to cripple the country’s energy supplies, as it has attempted to do in previous winters.
The Russian military said in Moscow that it had carried out strikes on production facilities belonging to missile and drone manufacturer Fire Point in Kiev and other cities.
Zelensky described the assault as a “birthday gift for Putin,” who turned 74 on Wednesday. The date also coincided with the 20th anniversary of the death of Kremlin-critical Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered in Moscow in 2006.
Zelensky argued that Moscow intended to continue on its current course because Putin did not believe Russia was facing sufficient consequences. “Putin does not feel that this is causing him problems,” Zelensky wrote on social media, arguing that sanctions against Russia had been weakened in many respects.
Ukraine is suffering from shortages of ammunition, particularly for weapons systems capable of intercepting ballistic missiles.
Russia is also deploying new types of drones for which Ukrainian air defences have yet to develop an effective counter-strategy.
Ukraine has been defending itself against Russia’s full-scale invasion since February 2022.
Zelensky has also spoken of Ukrainian counter-attacks on Russian oil facilities and other targets in Perm, Samara and Astrakhan.
He posted a video on X showing an oil tanker in the Black Sea off the coast of Sochi that caught fire the previous day.
GNA