Russian strike kills 13 in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine

KYIV, Ukraine — Russia bombed the city of Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine on Wednesday, officials said, killing at least 13 people and wounding dozens in a brazen daytime attack.

“There is nothing more cruel than launching aerial bombs on a city, knowing that ordinary civilians will suffer,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine wrote in a post on the social platform X that included video showing dead and wounded people lying on city streets as rescuers rushed to respond.

Local authorities said that more than 60 people were wounded in the attack, which the regional governor of Zaporizhzhia, Ivan Fedorov, noted “cynically struck the city in the middle of the day.” He shared graphic images on the Telegram messaging app that he said were from the scene, where medical teams and emergency workers were responding.

Slavko Khudiakov, a volunteer paramedic, was in the city by chance to recuperate between front-line rotations. He said that he raced to the scene of the explosion — blowing through red lights on the way.

“I arrived maybe seven minutes after the strike,” Khudiakov, 40, said in a telephone interview.

He said he treated a man “with a torn-off leg,” and before the night was over, he had treated about 10 people with “heavy” injuries. At least four were missing limbs, he added, and others were wounded by shrapnel.

Zaporizhzhia was once considered relatively safe, but in recent months, the city has increasingly come under attack. It is strategically important to Ukraine’s defense of the south, and also holds symbolic significance as the capital of the Zaporizhzhia region, which Russia has sought to annex. The region is home to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which Russian forces seized in 2022 in the early days of the full-scale invasion.

The death toll from Wednesday’s attack was the largest from a single strike in recent weeks, and comes as both Russia and Ukraine are trying to project strength before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.