Nineteen killed in heavy Russian attack on Ukraine

19 people died in a heavy Russian missile and drone attack that hit an apartment building in the western Ukraine city of Ternopil.

Another 66 people were injured in the attacks carried out overnight in Ukraine, targeting the energy and transportation infrastructure, and this caused emergency power outages in some regions experiencing cold weather.

The upper floors of the residential building in Ternopil were destroyed in the attack.

An orange glow burned through the fog from a fire in the tower block as black smoke billowed upwards.

Russia launched more than 470 drones and 48 missiles in the attack, officials said Wednesday.

Poland, a NATO member country that borders western Ukraine, temporarily closed Rzeszow and Lublin airports in the southeast of the country and scrambled Polish and allied aircraft as a precaution to protect its airspace.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who will hold talks in Türkiye to revive peace negotiations with Russia, confirmed that multi-storey residences were hit in Ternopil and said that others may have been buried under the rubble.

He called on allies to increase pressure on Russia to end its nearly four-year war in Ukraine, including by supplying Kiev 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 infrastructure was hit in seven regions of Ukraine, energy officials said.

A Reuters eyewitness from the western city of Lviv reported hearing explosions and that Kiev residents hid in subway stations on Wednesday morning.

The full extent of the damage was not immediately clear, but restrictions were placed on power use by consumers across the country.