Ukrainian emergency personnel work in the early hours of Wednesday to extinguish blazes in Kharkiv in the northeast of the country after Russian drone strikes that injured at least 30 people. The attacks were part of a major, deadly airborne assault across Ukraine. Photo by Sergey Kozlov
Nov. 19 (UPI) — At least 20 people were killed and more than 100 injured after Russian forces unleashed more than 500 drones and missiles against targets across Ukraine overnight.
The deadliest strike was in the western city of Ternopil, 70 miles southeast of Lviv, where 20 people died and 66 were injured, including 16 children, when a nine-story apartment building was almost completely destroyed, according to Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko.
Images and footage from the scene show the residential building reduced to smoldering rubble above the third floor.
Emergency rescue teams were continuing to search the wreckage for victims Wednesday morning and local authorities ordered residents to stay in their homes and keep windows closed due to the presence of harmful gases and particulates in the air at six times the normal levels.
The neighboring Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Khmelnytskyi provinces were also hit in attacks targeting energy, transport and other civilian infrastructure. Three people were injured in Ivano-Frankivsk while in Khmelnytskyi, damage to power-generating and distribution facilities left as many as 2,000 people without electricity in sub-zero temperatures.
At the other end of the country, at least 30 people were injured after drones attacked three districts of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, setting buildings and cars on fire.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a post on X that the Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Cherkasy, Chernihiv and Dnipro regions were also struck in the attack, which he said involved more than 470 attack drones and 48 missiles, mostly cruise missiles.
In a social media update, the Ukrainian military said that while 442 of the drones and 41 cruise missiles were intercepted, seven missiles and 34 drones were able to penerate air defenses, successfully targeting 14 locations. A further six locations were impacted by falling debris from downed drones and missiles.
The attacks came as Zelensky headed to Turkey from Spain on Wednesday to meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, saying he was seeking to “reinvigorate” peace talks with Moscow which have been stalled for months.
Reports have emerged that U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff has been engaging behind the scenes with his Russian counterpart, Kirill Dmitriev, to work toward a peace plan.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov would not confirm the U.S.-Russia negotiations and said Moscow would not be sending any representative to Wednesday’s talks in Ankara.
The move was linked to a meeting between Zelensky and U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Randy George in Kyiv on Thursday. Driscoll and George are the most senior U.S. officials to visit Ukraine in nine months.