Russia has continued a nearly 19-month-long invasion of neighboring Ukraine. Recently, though, the Ukrainians have gone on a counteroffensive, fighting to reclaim occupied territory.
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While Russia launched massive missile strikes across Ukraine overnight, Ukrainian forces have claimed to have attacked a Russian military base on the occupied Crimean Peninsula.
A source in Ukraine's security services told ABC News on Thursday that Ukrainian forces had hit the Saki airfield in Moscow-annexed Crimea, using an initial wave of drones to "overload" Russian air defense. Russian air force assets were then struck using Neptune missiles designed and produced by Ukraine, according to the source.
Multiple unverified videos of the Ukrainian attack were circulating online Thursday.
-ABC News' Yulia Drozd, Oleksiy Pshemyskiy, Tatyana Rymarenko and Tom Soufi-Burridge
Russian forces launched missile strikes on at least five Ukrainian cities late Wednesday and early Thursday, just hours before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's planned meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington, D.C.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who is traveling with Zelenskyy in the United States, described the strikes as "a massive missile attack" on civilian infrastructure, while Ukrainian state-owned grid operator Ukrenergo said it's the first major attack on the country's energy infrastructure in six months.
Russian forces fired a total of 43 missiles across Ukraine from east to west, and 36 of them were shot down by Ukrainian air defense, according to Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhny, commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The Ukrainian capital of Kyiv was among the major cities hit, along with areas of Kharkiv, Kherson, Cherkasy, Rivne and Lviv.
Ukrainian authorities were still assessing the damage and casualties on Thursday morning, but dozens of injuries have been reported so far. At least seven people were injured by falling debris in Kyiv.
Meanwhile, rescue efforts were ongoing in the central city of Cherkasy to evacuate as many as 20 people believed to be trapped beneath the rubble of a hotel that was destroyed in the strikes overnight. Thirteen others were already rescued and at least nine were injured, according to Ukrainian officials
The overnight strikes also targeted energy infrastructure in the Rivne region and an industrial zone in the Lviv area.
-ABC News' Victoria Beaulé, Guy Davies, Yulia Drozd and Tatyana Rymarenko.
Russian forces initiated six strikes on Kharkiv overnight, damaging civilian infrastructure, Ukrainian officials said early Thursday.
The mayor of Kyiv also said explosions occurred in the Ukrainian capital overnight. Debris from the downed rockets fell in the Darnytskyi and Holosiivskyi districts of the city.
Five people were hurt in the Darnytskyi district of Kyiv, where the strike also destroyed non-residential buildings. Three of them, including a 9-year-old girl, were hospitalized. Two were treated by medics on scene.
In the Shevchenkivskyi district of Kyiv, rocket debris damaged a gas pipe, an official said.
-ABC News' Will Gretsky
Seventeen people were killed, and 32 others injured, when a Russian missile hit a market in the center of Kostyantynivka in the Donetsk region, according to Ukrainian officials.
"At this moment, the artillery of Russian terrorists has killed 16 people in the city of Kostiantynivka, Donetsk region," President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Telegram. "A regular market. Shops. A pharmacy. People who did nothing wrong. Many wounded. Unfortunately, the number of casualties and the injured may rise."
The United States is standing by the NATO communique released Tuesday and its language around Ukraine joining the alliance, despite criticism from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy over the lack of a timeline to do so.
"The United States clearly joined with NATO allies in agreeing to a strong positive message reaffirming that Ukraine will become a member of the alliance," U.S. National Security Council Senior Director for Europe Amanda Sloat said during a press briefing in Lithuania's capital on Wednesday morning, on the final day of a high-stakes NATO summit. "And as the communique has made clear, as the president has spoken to directly in the past, we recognize that Ukraine has already made significant progress in terms of reforms. That was part of what led to allies making the decision to say that the Membership Action Plan was no longer required for Ukraine."
"But as both the president has said and as the communique made clear, there is still the need for Ukraine to take further democratic and security sector reforms," she added.
Sloat told reporters that the U.S. has been and would continue to work with Ukraine both bilaterally and through the NATO alliance to ensure that the reforms required to join the alliance are met.
When asked to respond to Zelenskyy's criticism that the lack of a timeline was "unprecedented and absurd," Sloat defended the agreement as a significant one.
"I would agree that the communique is unprecedented, but I see that in a positive way. We joined with allies yesterday in agreeing to a very strong, positive message. We reaffirmed that Ukraine will become a member of the NATO alliance," she said, arguing that removing the Membership Action Plan requirement for Ukraine was a "very significant" step on NATO's part.
-ABC News' Molly Nagle
