A missile kills 19 in a Pryluky block, five of them children

A Russian missile hit a five-storey block of flats in Pryluky, in Ukraine's northern Chernihiv region, in the early hours of Wednesday and killed 19 people, including five children, President Volodymyr Zelensky said. Three of the children were one year old. Across the country the same night of missiles and drones killed at least 25 people and wounded about 100, on Zelensky's count. Interior minister Ivan Vyhivskyi put the dead at 28. Moscow said it had struck military industry. It did not mention Pryluky.

Zelensky named the one-year-old victims as Oleksandr, Kyrylo and Serhii, and said an eight-year-old boy, Maxsym, had also been killed. Prime minister Serhii Koretskyi said a boy called Sasha had died with his mother, Kateryna, and her mother, Viktoriia. The boy's elder sister, Olha, survived. The missile destroyed about 30 flats while families were asleep. Rescuers were still in the rubble through the day, and the local toll rose as they worked. Early figures from emergency services had spoken of 14 dead, including four children, and about 50 wounded. By evening the presidential count for the building was 19 dead, five of them children.

The same wave hit other cities. Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said two people died in a fire in the Darnytskyi district after an air attack. Zelensky said civilians were also killed in Oleksandriia and Kremenchuk, two in each city on the Reuters accounting, with two more in the capital. Wikipedia's day page, citing the Guardian, described the Pryluky weapon as a North Korean KN-23 ballistic missile and put the national toll at least 28, with 20 of them in the single Pryluky building. The presidential figure for that building remained 19. The gap is the sort that opens when bodies are still being recovered. Both numbers come from Ukrainian official channels or from news desks citing them. They should not be averaged.

The scale of the launch is also reported in two sets. Zelensky said Russia fired 70 missiles, many of them ballistic, and dozens of Shahed drones. Ukraine's air force, in an Al Jazeera account of the same night, said Russia launched 130 drones, 48 cruise missiles and an unspecified number of ballistic missiles, and that air defence shot down 161 targets. The two counts can both be incomplete. Ballistic missiles and drones are logged by different desks, and a late salvo changes the sum. What the counts share is the mix: cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and one-way drones in the same night, aimed in part at energy sites. Zelensky said energy infrastructure was a main target and that Russia wanted the strike to be visible.

He also tied the date to Vladimir Putin's 74th birthday. In his nightly address he called the attack the present Putin had given himself, the killing of children and of other people. In an earlier comment he called it one of the most vile strikes. The Kremlin line, given by the defence ministry, was that Russian forces had carried out a massive strike on military-industrial facilities in Kyiv and other regions, using land, sea and air launched weapons and drones. No Russian statement accounted for the five-storey block.

The strike lands in the same week as a European Commission payment of 1.24 billion euros for Ukrainian-made drones, interceptors and missiles, drawn from the defence leg of the 90 billion euro Ukraine Support Loan. That payment does not put an interceptor over Pryluky tonight. It does say where Brussels is sending the next tranche: to Ukrainian firms, for weapons that can be built inside the country under attack. Zelensky has again asked allies for Patriot interceptors. A ballistic missile on a block of flats is the case he is making. Cruise missiles and drones are what the air force says it is already shooting down in large numbers. The ballistic share is the share that got through to Pryluky.

The open count is the one rescuers have not closed. If the interior ministry's 28 holds, Wednesday is among the deadlier nights of 2026 for Ukrainian civilians. If the presidential 25 holds, the Pryluky building still accounts for most of the dead. The names that will not move are the ones already read out: Oleksandr, Kyrylo, Serhii, Maxsym, Sasha, Kateryna, Viktoriia, and Olha, who lived.