Russian missile kills 19 in Ukrainian flats, including five children

A Russian missile killed 19 people, including five children, in an apartment block in northern Ukraine as families slept on Wednesday, destroying 30 flats and leaving rescuers searching for more victims. ^[1][4]

The missile struck a five-storey building in Pryluky, in the Chernihiv region north of Kyiv, early on October 7, 2026. Two entrance sections of the block were destroyed, police said. Three of the children killed were one-year-old boys. ^[1][3][4]

The toll rose as rescue crews recovered bodies through the day. A fifth child's body was found late in the afternoon, bringing the number of dead to 19. Rubble clearance continued into the evening, and the final toll was not yet established. ^[1]

The attack was part of a wider Russian missile and drone assault that killed 25 people across Ukraine, with deaths also reported in Kyiv, Kremenchuk and Oleksandriya. Pryluky accounted for more than three-quarters of those killed. President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia fired 70 missiles across the country and that energy infrastructure was a key target. ^[1]

Zelensky called the assault one of Russia's "most vile strikes". Russia's defence ministry described a "massive strike" on military-industrial facilities, but made no mention of Pryluky or the destroyed residential block. ^[1][2]

At 17:40 local time, before the latest death toll was reported, Zelensky said 55 people had been wounded, including seven children. Fifteen people had been rescued, one of them a child. Some residents were still not answering their phones. ^[3]

Families in the destroyed flats

The accounts released by Ukrainian officials describe households killed together inside their homes. One flat held three generations of a family. Another held a railway employee, his wife and their two children. ^[1][5][6]

Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi said a young boy died alongside his mother and grandmother, while his elder sister survived. A relative told Ukraine's public broadcaster Suspilne that the grandmother had been caring for the boy and that rescuers recovered the bodies of the mother and child around midday. ^[1][6]

The surviving girl had been in a room facing the yard, according to the relative who spoke to Suspilne. ^[6]

Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, chairman of Ukraine's national railway company Ukrzaliznytsia, said a railway driver, his wife and their children, aged eight and 13, were killed in their own flat. Zelensky separately said an eight-year-old boy was among the dead, though the available reports do not establish whether he was the railway employee's son. ^[1][3][5]

Ukrainian reporting also described the death of a former member of a police infantry battalion who had recently left on health grounds. His wife, a police officer, was in hospital in serious condition. Her mother was killed and a three-year-old niece was wounded. ^[5]

There were rescues, too. Suspilne reported that a rescuer carried a three-year-old girl out of the rubble alive and that she was receiving treatment in hospital. ^[3]

Police had recorded 55 wounded by 15:00, including seven children. Zelensky gave the same injury total in his later update, when the death toll stood at 18. The discovery of another child's body subsequently raised it to 19. ^[1][3][4]

The accounts of the families and rescues show how much remained to be done after the missile hit. Survivors were receiving hospital treatment while crews searched the destroyed sections for people who had not yet been found. ^[1][3][5]

Damage beyond the building

The destruction extended well beyond the 30 flats. Police reported damage to 15 apartment buildings, 16 private houses, a children's creativity centre, an enterprise, cars and gas networks. More than 18,000 residents were left without gas. ^[4][5]

For those who survived, the consequences therefore reached outside the blast site. Damaged homes and interrupted gas supplies made the attack a town-wide emergency as well as a rescue operation at one building. The count of destroyed flats captures only part of what Pryluky lost. ^[4]

Chernihiv regional governor Vyacheslav Chaus said cruise missiles struck the town, with one hitting the apartment block. His reported accounts differed on the number: one put it at five missiles, another at six. The precise missile type had only been preliminarily identified. ^[1][3][4]

Police opened a pre-trial investigation into a war crime causing death under Ukraine's criminal code. That is an investigation into the attack, not a completed judicial finding. Pryluky declared October 7, 8 and 9 days of mourning. ^[3][4]

Russia's defence ministry said its overnight assault used high-precision weapons launched from land, sea and air, as well as drones. It said the targets were military-industrial facilities in Kyiv and other Ukrainian regions, including plants that it said produced the Flamingo, a Ukrainian cruise missile. Its statement did not address the residential casualties in Pryluky. ^[1][2]

Moscow's account leaves the central event in Pryluky unexplained: a Russian missile struck a residential building while families slept, destroying two entrance sections and killing people in their homes. The ministry gave no account of why that building was hit. ^[1][4]

Zelensky suggested the attack on the block was a "birthday gift" for Vladimir Putin, who turned 74 on Wednesday. That was the Ukrainian president's assertion about motive. No evidence establishing that intent has been published in the available record. ^[1]

The birthday remark adds a political charge to the attack. The civilian toll needs no such interpretation to explain its gravity.

An overnight assault across Ukraine

Beyond Pryluky, two people were killed in Kyiv, two in Kremenchuk and two in Oleksandriya. In Kremenchuk alone, more than 430 apartments and private homes were damaged, according to the regional leader. ^[1]

Many Kyiv residents spent the night in underground metro stations. Ukraine's energy ministry began partial emergency power cuts in five regions as the consequences of the overnight assault spread beyond the places where missiles landed. ^[1][2]

The full damage to energy infrastructure had not been detailed. Nor was it established how many of the 70 missiles Zelensky said Russia fired reached their intended targets. The reported deaths, damaged homes and emergency cuts show the immediate effects, while the wider disruption was still being assessed. ^[1][2]

Ukraine's air force said it shot down five ballistic missiles, 39 cruise missiles and more than 100 drones. Those are substantial interception totals, but they sit alongside a day in which 25 people were killed and hundreds of homes were damaged. Air defence prevented some strikes and failed to prevent others. ^[1]

In Kyiv, Ukrainian police published photographs of what they said was an unexploded Russian Iskander, a short-range ballistic missile. BBC Verify confirmed that the images were genuine and that fragments came down on open land surrounded by high-rise apartment buildings. ^[1]

The attacks also followed Ukrainian strikes inside Russia. Zelensky said Ukrainian forces had hit four targets there during the previous 24 hours, including two oil facilities and a training ground in the Perm, Samara and Astrakhan regions. He also reported a strike on a target in the Black Sea. ^[1][2]

Those operations form part of the wider exchange of long-range attacks. They do not establish why this apartment block was hit, and Russia's statement supplied no explanation specific to Pryluky. ^[1][2]

The search continues

Zelensky renewed his appeal for allies to provide air-defence packages, saying he and his team were "every day looking for Patriot systems". The Patriot is the only weapon in Ukraine's arsenal capable of stopping high-velocity ballistic missiles, while global supplies have been depleted by the Iran war and the Ukraine conflict. ^[1][2]

That request addresses Ukraine's defences against future attacks. The missile that struck the Pryluky block was described by the regional governor as a cruise missile, a different class of weapon. The precise circumstances of its passage through Ukraine's air defences have not been established in the available accounts. ^[1][3][4]

Pryluky's immediate task remains the aftermath: clearing the rubble, treating the wounded and establishing whether everyone who lived in the destroyed sections has been accounted for. Rescue work was continuing into the evening. ^[1][3]

The town's declared mourning period runs through October 9. Rescuers still have a search to finish. ^[1][3][4]