It was the second attack in a week in which Russia deployed hard-to-intercept ballistic missiles – with Kyiv appealing for allies to send missiles for US-made Patriot air defence systems.
“It is precisely on ballistics that Russia is placing its bet, and the bet of those who want peace must be on protection from ballistic missiles,” Zelenskyy said.
Russia fired 68 missiles – “many of them ballistic” – and 351 attack drones, he said.
Two more people, including an 18-year-old girl, were killed in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv said.
“NEED TO PRAY”
Emergency employees worked through destroyed apartments and carried out bodies on white sheets.
A woman screamed as rescuers pulled a body from the eighth floor of a building.
“I felt the need to pray,” Oleksandr Kolomiyets, 60, told AFP outside the destroyed building in the Podilsky district.
Anna Misko, a 36-year-old who recently returned to Ukraine, said she and her child had survived by a “miracle” as they went down to the ground floor of the building.
Russia “wants to destroy us”, she said, adding that “there is no place” that is safe in Ukraine.
“We did not expect this, as there was an attack literally five days ago,” she said.
Russia’s defence ministry said the “massive strike” had targeted what it described as “military-industrial enterprises”, fuel and energy facilities in several Ukrainian regions.
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