At least five killed in Russian air strikes on Pryluky, officials say
At least five people, including a one-year-old child, his mother and grandmother, were killed on Thursday in an overnight drone attack on the northern Ukrainian city of Pryluky, officials said.
Six drones hit a residential area in the city shortly before dawn, injuring nine others, according to authorities.
The one-year-old killed was the grandchild of the local fire chief, Ukraine's Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.
The fire chief, identified by local officials as 50-year-old Oleksandr Lebid, "arrived to respond to the aftermath right at his own home," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on Telegram. "It turned out that a Shahed drone hit his house."
"Today our hearts are scorched by pain," the police force wrote on Telegram. "This is not just a loss — it is three generations of life uprooted."
Liudmyla Horbunova, 55, who lives across the street from where the Shahed drone hit, said Shyhyda had moved with her son last weekend to her parents' house from her home in Kyiv because she was scared of potential Russian attacks on the capital.
"She ran away from Shaheds in Kyiv, but they found her here, in Pryluky," Horbunova told AP.
Pryluky, which had a pre-war population of some 50,000 people, lies about 100 kilometres east of the capital Kyiv. The city is far from the front line and does not host any known military assets.
The last time Pryluky was struck was in November last year, when a Russian missile hit an administrative building and injured one person.
Zelenskyy said a total of 103 drones and one ballistic missile targeted multiple Ukrainian regions overnight, including Donetsk, Kharkiv, Odesa, Sumy, Chernihiv, Dnipro and Kherson.
"This is another massive strike," Zelenskyy said. "It is yet another reason to impose the strongest possible sanctions and apply pressure collectively."
Hours later, 19 people were injured in a Russian drone strike on the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
Those hurt included children, a pregnant woman, and a 93-year-old, regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov wrote on Telegram.
At around 1:05 am, Shahed-type drones struck two apartment buildings in the city's Slobidskyi district, causing fires and destroying several private vehicles.
"By launching attacks while people sleep in their homes, the enemy once again confirms its tactic of insidious terror," Syniehubov wrote on Telegram.
Those attacks came just hours after US President Donald Trump spoke by phone with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
According to Trump, Putin said "very strongly" that Russia will retaliate for Ukraine's stunning drone attacks on military airfields deep inside Russia on Sunday.
Diplomatic efforts to stop Russia's more than three-year-long war have so far delivered no significant progress, and Moscow's grinding war of attrition has continued unabated.
Zelenskyy, who has accepted a US ceasefire proposal and offered to meet with Putin in an attempt to break the stalemate in negotiations, wants more international sanctions on Russia to force it to accept a settlement.
Putin has shown no willingness to meet with Zelenskyy and has indicated no readiness to compromise.
Germany's new Chancellor Friedrich Merz is due to meet Trump in Washington on Thursday as he works to keep the US on board with Western diplomatic and military support for Ukraine.
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