Putin'S Birthday: Russian Missile Kills at Least 20 in Pryluky Apartment Block, Five of Them Children

Three of the dead children were one year old. Their names were Oleksandr, Kyrylo and Serhiy, President Volodymyr Zelensky said. An eight-year-old boy, Maksym, was also killed, and the state emergency service later confirmed a fifth child among the dead.

The strike on Pryluky in Chernihiv Oblast came during an overnight Russian mass attack with missiles and drones on 7 October. At least 55 people were wounded in the city, seven of them children, the Kyiv Independent reports.

"Birthday gift"

“Today, as a 'birthday gift' to Putin, the Russian army destroyed a residential building in Pryluky, in the Chernihiv region.”

— President Volodymyr Zelensky, via the Kyiv Independent

"It was an ordinary five-story apartment block. There may still be people under the rubble," Zelensky added, saying first responders were working nonstop to find every person.

Chernihiv governor Viacheslav Chaus said that on Putin's birthday he hopes the Russian dictator ends up "in custody in The Hague or in hell".

"Sheer horror"

Halyna Osovyk, 55, lives across the road from the destroyed building and knew some of the victims. She told the Kyiv Independent that one family was trapped under the debris: the mother, the grandmother and one child died, while another child was taken to hospital.

“It was just sheer horror. And the sound of the missiles — you simply cannot put it into words.”

— Pryluky resident Halyna Osovyk, 55, to the Kyiv Independent

Asked what she would wish Putin on his birthday, she answered: "I wish he could have what we are going through now."

The date carries weight. Exactly 20 years earlier, on 7 October 2006, the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead in Moscow on Putin's birthday, as @visegrad24, whose post is the source of this Signal, also noted. On the same day as the Pryluky strike, the EU paid out 1.24 billion euros for Ukrainian-made drones and missiles.