26 killed including five children in Russian strikes on Ukraine
Russian missile and drone strikes across Ukraine killed 26 people, including five children, on 8 Oct 2026. The deadliest attack hit a five-storey building in Pryluky, Chernigiv region, killing 19. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy condemned the strikes as "one of the most vile" in the conflict.
Russian missile and drone strikes across Ukraine killed 26 people on Wednesday 8 Oct 2026, among them five children, in what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called "one of the most vile strikes" of the nearly five-year war. The deadliest single attack hit the town of Pryluky in the Chernigiv region, where a powerful blast reduced half of a five-storey building to a smoking pile of charred concrete and twisted metal. Ukraine's interior ministry said 19 people died there, including three 12-month-old babies and an eight-year-old child, with a fifth child's body pulled from the rubble later in the evening. Seven other children were among the dozens wounded, Zelenskyy said, accusing Russia of knowingly striking "ordinary cities, ordinary life".
Russia launched at least 50 missiles and 130 drones overnight against several regions including Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv, Kharkiv and Poltava, Ukraine's air force said. Two people were killed when missiles hit high-rise buildings in Kremenchuk and Dnipro in central Ukraine, while two others lost their lives in Oleksandriya. In the capital Kyiv, two people died in a fire caused by a strike in the densely populated Darnytskyi neighbourhood, mayor Vitali Klitschko said, and one more person was killed when a strike set a car ablaze in the courtyard of a residential building. The air force said it intercepted five ballistic missiles, 39 cruise missiles and over 100 drones, but acknowledged that new jet-powered drones and ballistic missiles were harder to shoot down.
Worried residents in Kyiv hunkered down overnight in subway stations, hauling duffel bags, sleeping mats and blankets. "The whole of Kyiv is in a state of fear," Iryna Rybalchenko, a bank worker, told AFP while sitting on a platform surrounded by bags. "We were stuck at work today and everyone – our group chats, our bosses – were messaging us to be careful." Power cuts plunged parts of Kyiv into darkness on Wednesday evening, disrupting traffic and cutting water supplies on the right bank of the capital. In the Russia-occupied part of Ukraine's Kherson region, two people including a teenage girl were killed in a drone strike, the Moscow-backed head of the area posted on Telegram, and two more died in a drone strike near the Russia-annexed city of Donetsk.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine's "just responses" to the attacks included strikes on two oil facilities and a training ground in Russia's Perm, Samara and Astrakhan regions, as well as in the Black Sea. He repeated his call for new air defences, describing ballistic missiles as "the greatest challenge" Ukraine faces. "I don't see any military significance in this at all," said Yuliia Shamrai, 31, who works in online marketing and lives near the stricken building in Pryluky.
