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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 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 upward, while an orange glow burned through the haze from a fire in the tower block.
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.
Reports of strikes in other cities
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed multi-storey 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 defence missiles.
“Every brazen attack against ordinary life shows that the pressure on Russia is insufficient. Effective sanctions and assistance to Ukraine can change this,” Zelenskyy 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.
Zelenskyy is set to hold talks in Turkey on Wednesday and meet U.S. army officials in Kyiv on Thursday in a new drive to revive peace negotiations with Russia.
No face-to-face talks have taken place between Kyiv and Moscow since a meeting in Istanbul in July, and Russian forces have pressed on after the invasion began in February 2022.
There were three rounds of talks this year between Russia and Ukraine, and brokered by Turkey, none with the direct involvement of Zelenskyy or Russian President Vladimir Putin. Since then, there have been multiple exchanges of war prisoners and war dead between the two countries.
Pokrovsk has been nearly cleared of civilians as Russia tries to firmly seize the city that’s strategic to capturing Ukraine’s Donetsk region.
Putin was invited to Alaska in August by Donald Trump, and the U.S. president last month gave a positive assessment of a telephone conversation with the Russian leader.
The Kremlin on Wednesday played down an Axios report that the United States was working on a 28-point peace plan for Ukraine. When asked directly if it was true that a conceptual discussion had led to new proposals on peace being put down on paper, as reported by Axios, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: “No. So far there are no innovations on this that can be reported to you.”
Ukraine allies in Europe have since met several times in person and by video to address how to help the country, and shield it from further Russian aggression, should a ceasefire be reached.
The uncertainties include how they can help fund war-devastated Ukraine, what postwar security guarantees they might be able to provide, and what American commitments to future security arrangements might entail.
The U.S. to this point has ruled out putting American troops on the ground in Ukraine.
