'Vile' and by design: Russian strikes kill at least 21, Pryluky buries 13 from one block

Russia launched one of its heaviest overnight barrages in weeks against Ukraine, and by Wednesday the count was still rising. At least 21 people were reported killed across the country, according to Associated Press reporting carried by British outlets, as rescue workers searched the rubble of a five-storey apartment building destroyed in Pryluky, in the northern Chernihiv region.

Pryluky was the deadliest single strike. Regional governor Vyacheslav Chaus told national television that the death toll there had risen to 13, including four children, with 50 more people injured, Reuters reported. Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko gave similar figures earlier in the day. Photographs from the scene showed a large section of the roof blown apart and at least two floors destroyed.

Deaths were also reported in Kyiv, where at least two people were killed in residential areas, and in Kremenchuk in the Poltava region, where regional head Vitalii Diakivnych said two people were killed and seven injured, with a rescue operation continuing. Strikes were reported in other cities along the Dnipro, including Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia, and many of the attacks were aimed at Ukraine's electricity grid as temperatures begin to drop.

President Volodymyr Zelensky, who had warned on Tuesday evening that a major attack was expected, said the Russians wanted to strike painfully and demonstratively. In posts reported by several outlets, he put the barrage at about 70 missiles, many of them ballistic, alongside Shahed drones, and said only a portion were intercepted. He described the destruction of the Pryluky block on Vladimir Putin's birthday in pointed terms, and renewed his plea for Patriot missiles, saying air defence packages are a vital necessity and that Ukraine is looking worldwide for available stocks, which are in short supply because of the Iran war.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called the attacks a deliberate strategy of terror, aimed at making daily life impossible for Ukrainians who want to live in peace. Russia's defence ministry said its forces carried out a massive overnight strike targeting industrial facilities involved in the production and storage of missiles and drones across Ukraine.

The gap between those accounts is the story of this war in miniature: a ministry statement about industrial targets, and a residential stairwell in Pryluky where four of the dead were children. With winter approaching and the grid again under fire, Zelensky's argument is that the toll is decided as much in allied stockpiles as over Ukrainian cities. As of Wednesday, rescuers were still searching for residents, and officials warned the numbers could rise.