Russia Pounds Ukraine With Missiles and Drones on Putin's Birthday, Killing at Least 25

A deadly overnight barrage

Russia launched a large-scale combined assault of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and attack drones across Ukraine overnight into October 7, the day President Vladimir Putin turned 74. The strikes continued into the day with further attacks on Kyiv, according to Ukrainian officials.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said at least 25 people were killed, including five children, and more than 100 were injured in the wave of attacks, which hit the capital alongside Kremenchuk, Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia. "A birthday gift for Putin," Zelensky said of the timing, a line he has used before to describe strikes that have coincided with the Russian leader's calendar.

The deadliest single strike

The heaviest toll came in Pryluky, a city in Ukraine's Chernihiv region, where a Russian strike hit a five-story residential building. Local officials said at least 19 people were killed there and 55 more injured, making it the single deadliest location in the night's attacks. Rescue crews worked through rubble for hours as the death toll climbed through the morning.

In Kremenchuk, an industrial city that has been targeted repeatedly through the war, authorities reported 47 people injured in a drone strike, though no fatalities had been confirmed there at the time of reporting.

Part of a longer pattern

Ukrainian officials and independent observers have noted that Russian strikes have repeatedly fallen on symbolic dates through the war, from national holidays to anniversaries of past attacks. Putin's birthday has become one of those recurring flashpoints, with Kyiv officials pointing to similar large-scale strikes in previous years that landed on or around October 7.

The attack adds to a war that has ground on for more than four and a half years, with both sides continuing long-range strikes deep into each other's territory even as diplomatic efforts to reach a lasting ceasefire remain stalled. For residents of Pryluky, the immediate task was far simpler than any peace process: digging through the wreckage of a building where neighbors had been asleep hours earlier.