Nineteen people were killed in a heavy overnight Russian missile and drone attack that struck an apartment building in the western Ukrainian city of Ternopil, Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday.
Another 66 people were wounded in the overnight strikes on Ukraine that targeted energy and transport infrastructure, forcing emergency power cuts in a number of regions in frigid temperatures.
The upper floors of the residential building in Ternopil were torn away in the attack. Black smoke poured upwards, while an orange glow burned through the haze from a fire in the tower block, Reuters reported.
Russia launched more than 470 drones and 48 missiles in the overnight attack, officials said. Poland, a NATO member state bordering western Ukraine, temporarily closed Rzeszow and Lublin airports in the southeast of the country and scrambled Polish and allied aircraft as a precaution to safeguard its airspace.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who was due to hold talks in Türkiye in efforts to revive peace negotiations with Russia, confirmed multi-story residential buildings had been hit in Ternopil, and said others may be trapped under the rubble.
He urged allies to increase pressure on Russia to end its nearly four-year-old war in Ukraine, including by providing Kyiv with more air-defense missiles.
"Every brazen attack against ordinary life shows that the pressure on Russia is insufficient. Effective sanctions and assistance to Ukraine can change this," he said on X.
Energy officials said energy infrastructure had been struck in seven Ukrainian regions. A Reuters witness in the western city of Lviv reported hearing explosions and Kyiv residents took cover in metro stations on Wednesday morning.
The full extent of the damage was not immediately clear but restrictions were placed on power usage for consumers across the country.
