Russian strikes on Ukrainian cities kill at least 8

Russian missiles and drones struck residential and civilian targets in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities overnight into Wednesday, killing at least eight people, Ukrainian officials said.

The attacks came a day after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned on X that Russia was preparing a massive strike.

In Pryluky, a city in the northern Chernihiv region, a missile hit a high-rise apartment building, killing at least four people and injuring 20 others, including three children, according to preliminary information from the State Emergency Service.

Regional military administration chief Viacheslav Chaus said emergency services were at the scene and removing rubble. Photos he posted showed part of one entrance to the apartment building had collapsed.

In Kyiv, ballistic missiles struck the capital, with explosions heard across the city center at around 3 a.m. Two people were killed, the city military administration said.

A rocket hit a nonresidential building in Kyiv's Podilskyi district, triggering a fire, while another strike set a garage complex in the Darnytskyi district ablaze. The fire was later extinguished, and debris fell in a nearby open area, the military administration said.

Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv Regional Military Administration, said the wider Kyiv region was also targeted in a combined attack involving drones and ballistic missiles. Three production and storage facilities were damaged in the Obukhiv district, he said.

In Kremenchuk in the Poltava region, two people were killed and seven others injured, regional military administration chief Vitalii Diakivnych said. Rescue operations were continuing.

"That is exactly what the enemy is counting on. For us to be afraid to fall asleep. To let our children out of our sight. To plan anything. So that everyone thinks: next time it could be my address," he said.

Russia's Defense Ministry said its forces carried out a massive overnight strike targeting industrial facilities involved in the production and storage of Flamingo missiles and drones across Ukraine. The Associated Press could not independently verify the claim.

Russian forces frequently strike residential areas, power grids and civilian infrastructure across Ukraine, despite Moscow's insistence that it targets only military sites.

The Russian ministry said the strikes targeted facilities in Kyiv and the surrounding region, as well as the Chernihiv, Kirovohrad, Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava and Kharkiv regions.

It also said port and ship-repair facilities in the Odesa region, along with ships carrying cargo for the Ukrainian military, were hit. -UNB