Russia pounded Ukraine with waves of missiles and drones in one of its most “vile strikes” on Wednesday, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, killing at least 32 people, including children, and damaging industrial ​facilities and energy infrastructure.

The heaviest losses were in Pryluky in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region, where a Russian missile destroyed a five-storey residential building.

Ukraine’s emergency service said on Telegram that ‌the death toll in Pryluky has risen to 22 as of Thursday morning and two more bodies were discovered following a Russian air strike on an apartment building in the capital Kyiv, taking the toll there to four dead.

Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi has earlier put the country-wide death toll at 28, including 20 people who died in the Pryluky attack, including five children.

On Wednesday evening, prosecutors in Kyiv said falling debris from a drone killed two people in a suburb.

Zelenskiy said that 100 ​people had been injured throughout the country.

The president noted that the attacks coincided with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s birthday.

“This is the kind of birthday present that Putin gave himself: the killing ​of children, the killing of people,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.

In earlier online comments, Zelenskiy said civilians had also been killed in the capital Kyiv and in the central cities of Oleksandria and Kremenchuk during the massive attack.

In total, Russia fired 70 missiles at Ukraine overnight — many of them high-velocity ballistic munitions — and dozens of Shahed attack ​drones, he said.

“The Russians wanted to strike painfully and demonstratively. This was one of the most vile strikes.”

In Pryluky, an excavator and dozens of rescuers with shovels sifted through rubble at the site where several ​sections of the apartment block had collapsed.

Emergency workers used ladders to get to the upper floors of what remained of the building, and brought out 15 survivors as they worked their way down through the rubble. Around 55 people were wounded in the town, regional officials said.

“There’s a lot of destruction, especially in the town centre,” said Danylo Savenko, deputy mayor of Pryluky, who said he had run to an air raid shelter with his wife as soon as ​he heard the missiles flying.

Big jump in reported drone interceptions

Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had carried out a “massive strike” on military-industrial facilities in Kyiv and other Ukrainian regions, using high-precision land-, sea- ​and air-launched weapons, as well as drones.

Ukraine’s air force said it had downed just over 80 percent of the 46 jet-powered drones launched by Russia — an increase from recent weeks when air defences took down 50 percent to 60 percent.

Since the ‌summer, Russia has used increasing numbers of the new high-velocity drones in round-the-clock attacks on Kyiv and other cities, with Ukraine’s air defences struggling to cope.

The air force did not explain the jump in the interception rate and did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Zelenskiy said the Russian ballistic missiles remained the major challenge for Ukraine, adding that he and his team were “every day looking for Patriot (missile interception) systems that can and must protect people’s lives”.

Ukraine received a new €1.2 billion ($1.34 billion) tranche from the European Union on Wednesday and will channel the funds towards defence needs, Prime Minister Sergii Koretskyi said.

The US-made Patriot system is the ​only weapon in Ukraine’s arsenal capable of stopping ​high-velocity ballistic missiles. Global supplies have been drained by the Iran warand the Ukraine conflict.

Russia’s defence ministry said its targets included sites where Ukrainian defence company Fire Point manufactures and stores its Flamingo cruise missiles and medium- and long-range drones in Kyiv as well as regions of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kirovohrad, Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava and Kharkiv.

Last week Zelenskiy said Ukraine had fired ​its first domestically made ballistic missile in combat, produced by Fire Point. In an interview with Reuters, he said he expected the company to have ​a longer-range FP-9 missile ready by the autumn. Fire Point has said that weapon will be able to reach Moscow.

People shelter overnight in Kyiv metro

Zelenskiy said Ukrainian troops hit four targets in Russia over the past 24 hours, including two Russian oil facilities and a training ground in the Perm, Samara and Astrakhan regions.

In the Reuters interview, Zelenskiy said Ukraine would hit Russia’s energy assets in response to Moscow’s escalating strikes on civilian infrastructure.

Ukrainian officials and military intelligence shared warnings of ​the upcoming attacks on Wednesday, and many Kyiv residents took shelter in the city’s underground metro stations.

Several loud explosions reverberated ​through the capital during the night.

In the part of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region under Russian control, the regional Russia-installed governor said a Ukrainian drone killed two civilians in a car. And Russia-installed officials in Moscow-held parts of eastern Donetsk Region said three ​people died in Ukrainian attacks.

($1 = 0.8947 euros)