RUSSIAN MISSILE STRIKES KILL AT LEAST 20 ACROSS UKRAINE

Russian missile strikes across central and eastern Ukraine killed at least 20 people overnight, Ukrainian officials said, in what President Volodymyr Zelensky called one of Russia's "most vile" attacks. Zelensky said a five-storey apartment building in Pryluky, in the Chernihiv region, was destroyed, calling it a "birthday gift" to Vladimir Putin, who turns 74 on Wednesday. Ukraine's State Emergency Service said the Pryluky death toll rose to 14, including four children, with 50 injured, seven of them children. Strikes also hit Kyiv, Dnipro, Kremenchuk, Zaporizhzhia and Oleksandriya, with two deaths reported in each of Kyiv and Oleksandriya. One report put the overall toll at 15 dead, including children, while officials gave a figure of at least 20.

Zelensky said Russia fired 70 missiles in total, adding that "the Russians wanted to strike painfully and demonstratively." Strikes also damaged five apartment buildings in Dnipro and four high-rise buildings in Kremenchuk, killing two people and injuring eight across both cities. Rescue teams worked through the night in Pryluky, where Zelensky said people remained trapped in rubble, and police footage showed emergency workers digging through the collapsed building. Zelensky said Ukraine had struck targets in Russia's Perm, Samara and Astrakhan regions over the previous 24 hours, and reported "a response in the Black Sea" without giving further detail.

Moscow had not commented on the strikes. Ukraine's national police published images said to show an unexploded Russian Iskander missile lying in open ground surrounded by high-rise flats in a Kyiv district, and an independent verification process found the images genuine. The differing casualty figures reflect initial tolls from Zelensky being revised upward by the State Emergency Service as rescue work continued. Search operations were ongoing in the affected cities on Wednesday morning.