A Russian missile reduced a five-story apartment building in Pryluky to rubble overnight, and Ukraine’s state emergency service said Thursday that twenty-two people died in the Chernihiv region city alone. Four more bodies were recovered in Kyiv after strikes across the capital, pushing the nationwide civilian toll from the barrage past thirty as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned one of Moscow’s most “vile” attacks since the full-scale invasion.
Kyiv had spent Tuesday warning that intelligence pointed to a massive strike. The wave that followed hit more than a dozen regions with missiles and Shahed-type drones, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said on Telegram, with roughly one hundred people wounded nationwide. Irish and British outlets quoted officials saying at least five children were among the dead, though casualty counts continued to climb as daylight searches continued.
What rescuers faced in Pryluky
Photographs from the scene showed a pancaked facade and cranes lifting concrete slabs while neighbors watched from intact blocks nearby. Emergency crews used thermal imaging overnight, the state service said, because fires and dust made visual searches slow. Pryluky sits northeast of Kyiv and had seen sporadic drone traffic before, but local officials said the direct hit on housing was the worst single loss in the city since 2022.
In Kyiv, falling debris from intercepted drones damaged a separate apartment tower, adding to the capital’s four confirmed fatalities. Zelenskyy posted that Russia was “trying to make daily life impossible” for civilians while the front line remains largely static. He said Ukraine would keep targeting military logistics and energy sites inside Russia in response.
Moscow’s account and Ukraine’s counter-strikes
Russia’s defense ministry said the overnight operation struck industrial facilities involved in missile and drone production and storage across Ukraine. It did not address the Pryluky housing strike in its initial statement. Ukrainian air-defense officials said they downed a large share of incoming weapons but could not stop every hit in dense urban areas.
Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces hit two oil facilities and a training ground in Russia’s Perm, Samara and Astrakhan regions on Wednesday, part of a long-range campaign against refineries and depots. He also published images of a burning tanker near Sochi that Ukrainian media linked to a sea-drone attack on a vessel carrying oil from Novorossiysk; those maritime claims remained unverified by independent trackers Thursday morning.
What diplomats are watching
The casualty spike lands as European capitals debate additional air-defense aid and as Gulf states try to keep oil flowing despite Red Sea and Hormuz risks from parallel Middle East fighting. For Ukraine’s government, the Pryluky death toll is a domestic political test: officials promised faster shelter upgrades last winter, and another high-rise collapse will renew questions about whether blast walls and basement rules were enforced in secondary cities, not just Kyiv.
Rescue work in Pryluky was continuing Thursday with dogs and heavy equipment, the emergency service said. National police opened a war-crimes documentation file, a procedural step Kyiv uses after strikes on residential buildings. No new round of prisoner exchanges or ceasefire talks was announced in connection with the attack.