Russia kills at least 12 in biggest Ukraine airstrikes in nearly 2 months

Russia fired more than 20 cruise missiles and two drones at Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine early Friday, killing at least 12 people and hitting residential buildings in central Ukraine, officials said.

In the central city of Uman, about 215 kilometers south of Kyiv, firefighters battled a blaze in a residential apartment building on the top floor. At least 10 people were killed, including two children, and nine were taken to hospital, regional governor Ihor Taburets said.

“All the glass flew out, everything flew out, even the chandelier fell. Everything was covered in glass,” resident Olha Turina told The Associated Press at the scene. “Then there was an explosion. We had just found our things and ran out,” he said.

Turina, whose husband was fighting on the front lines, said one of her classmates was missing. “I don’t know where he is, I don’t know if he’s alive,” he said. “I don’t know why we have to go through all this. We’ve never bothered anyone.”

It is unclear what Russia was targeting in Friday’s attack, although it has regularly attacked civilian infrastructure, particularly energy facilities during the winter.

Since late last year, Russia has launched such attacks roughly weekly, although it has stopped as winter ends, with Western countries saying Moscow has used a large arsenal of long-range missiles in a failed attempt to freeze Ukrainian cities.

Woman, child killed in Dnipro

One of the people killed in the Uman attack was a 75-year-old who was in her apartment in a neighboring building and suffered internal bleeding from the blast’s shock wave, according to emergency personnel at the scene.

Three body bags lay next to the building as smoke continued to billow hours after the attack. Soldiers, civilians and emergency crews searched the rubble outside for more victims, while residents dragged belongings out of the damaged building.

Moscow says it did not intentionally target civilians, but its airstrikes and shelling have killed thousands of people and destroyed towns and cities across Ukraine. Kyiv says that attacks on cities far from the front lines serve no military purpose other than to terrorize and harm civilians, amounting to a war crime.

A 31-year-old woman and her two-year-old daughter were also killed in the eastern city of Dnipro in another attack, regional governor Serhii Lysak said. Four people were also injured, and private homes and businesses were damaged.

Ukraine’s military says it has shot down 21 of 23 cruise missiles fired by Russia.

“This Russian terror must face a fair response from Ukraine and the world,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a Telegram post along with an image of the ruins. “And it will.”

The capital Kyiv was also rocked by the explosion, with officials reporting that air defense units had destroyed 11 missiles and two drones.

Two people were wounded in the town of Ukrayinka south of Kyiv, officials said.

Explosions were also reported after midnight in the central cities of Kremenchuk and Poltava, and in Mykolaiv in the south, according to Ukraine’s Interfax news agency.

NATO insists on ammunition, weapons delivery

The attack comes as NATO announced that its allies and partner countries have delivered more than 98 percent of the combat vehicles promised to Ukraine during the Russian invasion and war, bolstering Kyiv’s capabilities as it contemplates launching a counter-attack.

Along with more than 1,550 armored vehicles, 230 tanks and other equipment, Ukraine’s allies have sent “a lot of ammunition” and trained and equipped more than nine new Ukrainian brigades, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said.

More than 30,000 troops are estimated to make up the new brigade. Some NATO partner countries, such as Sweden and Australia, also provide armored vehicles.

“This will put Ukraine in a strong position to continue to recapture the occupied territories,” Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels.

The overnight attacks and comments came as Zelenskyy said he and Chinese leader Xi Jinping held a “long and meaningful” phone call on Wednesday in the first known contact since Russia’s full-scale invasion more than a year ago.