Ukraine says Russia bombed apartment block as birthday gift for Putin

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russia’s military of deliberately killing civilians and bombing residential buildings as a macabre gift for Vladimir Putin, who celebrates his 74th birthday on Wednesday.Ukraine’s president described Russia’s overnight drone and missiles strikes, which killed at least 15 people, as “despicable”. “The Russians wanted to strike painfully and demonstratively,” he said.Video showed a ballistic missile slamming into a five-storey apartment block in the town of Pryluky in the northern Chernihiv region. The concrete building collapsed, entombing those inside. Nine people died, including three children, officials said, with 38 people injured.Rescuers picked through the rubble in an attempt to find survivors. “Today, on Putin’s birthday, the Russian army ‘presented’ him with the destruction of a residential block in Pryluky. It was an ordinary five-storey block of flats,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media.He acknowledged that Ukraine was struggling to shoot down enemy ballistic missiles, and appealed to allies to provide US-manufactured Patriot interceptors. “Air defence packages for us right now are a vital necessity,” he said.People carry a casualty after the attack on Pryluky. Photograph: Valentyn Ogirenko/ReutersThe bombardment featured 70 ballistic missiles, as well as 46 jet-powered drones, which in recent weeks have been terrorising Ukrainians on a daily basis. Ukraine’s air force said it managed to down just over 80% of the fast-moving drones – an improvement on the previous average of 50% to 60%.Eleven regions were hit. Two people were killed in Kyiv, with other deadly strikes in the central cities of Kremenchuk and Oleksandriia, where four civilians died. There was also extensive damage in Dnipro.Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said Russian generals had given Putin his favourite birthday present: “war crimes”. Moscow’s grim strategy of bombarding the country’s population so it capitulated would not work, he said.“The Ukrainian people are not going to give up, because it’s about Ukraine’s survival as a nation and as a state,” he said. The “ultimate” present would be a dock in The Hague, home to the international criminal court, where the Russian president would stand trial, Sybiha said.One resident in Kremenchuk said the attack happened early on Wednesday. The woman told Ukrainian media: “We were making tea in the morning. My husband was getting ready for work. And that was it. I found myself on the floor. What can I say? It was very scary.”Local people in Dnipro said a blast wave affected 16 buildings, blowing out doors and windows. One woman, Iryna, said her auto parts workshop had been hit for the sixth time. The ceiling collapsed in Wednesday’s strike, she said, with toilets, sinks and equipment damaged.“The explosion happened around three in the morning. We were sleeping at home. Everyone was scared, probably the whole city heard it. We will restore the shop and continue to work,” she told the Suspline channel.Zelenskyy said Ukraine had carried out its own long-range strikes on economic and military sites inside Russia. They included two oil complexes and a training ground in the ⁠Perm, ​Samara ‌and Astrakhan ‌regions.“These are ‌justified Ukrainian responses to ​all Russian attacks on ⁠our people,” ​he said.The president posted dramatic video of a burning oil tanker close to the southern resort city of Sochi. Russian officials said naval drones had hit the Liberian-flagged ship, adding that “crude oil was burning openly on the Black Sea”. Its Indian crew of 23 was rescued, they said.Both sides have heavily targeted commercial shipping around the Black Sea since Putin’s full-scale invasion in 2022. In recent weeks Russia has picked off vessels carrying Ukrainian grain, paralysing maritime traffic from Ukraine’s southern ports including Odesa.Earlier this week, a civilian cargo ship sank after a suspected attack by Russian drones in the Black Sea. Its crew is still missing. A second vessel carrying grain was also hit while sailing in Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone, said the Bulgarian prime minister, Rumen Radev. The search for survivors was called off on Wednesday, according to Vice-Admiral Rumen Nikolov of the Maritime Administration Executive ⁠Agency. “There are no ​traces of the sailors from the ‌first ship, and there will ‌be none,” he said.