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.

Ukrainian drones hit Russian oil depot

Hours before air-raid warnings were issued for Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian drones attacked an oil depot near a critical military airfield in southern Russia. The attack was the latest in a Ukrainian campaign aimed at inflicting pain deep inside Russia even as Ukraine’s forces lose ground at home on the battlefield.

Ukraine’s military said early Wednesday that it had struck the Kristall oil storage facility in Engels, about 300 miles from the border between the two countries. It said the depot supplied fuel to the Engels airfield, which it has said is a staging ground for Russia’s long-running attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, and which hosts some of Russia’s long-range, nuclear-capable bombers.

A Russian official wrote on the Telegram messaging app that a “massive” drone attack had targeted Engels. Roman Busargin, the governor of the Saratov region, said that air defenses had intercepted the drones but that falling debris had hit an “industrial facility” and ignited a fire.

Two firefighters died battling the blaze, Busargin said about 10 hours later, as the flames still raged and he declared a state of emergency.

A video circulating on Telegram and verified by The New York Times showed several structures on fire at the Kristall facility, which is about 5 miles from the Engels airfield. Other videos verified by the Times showed what appeared to be multiple explosions and huge plumes of smoke rising into the sky.

Ukraine has repeatedly targeted the airfield in trying to limit the strikes on Ukraine’s energy system, which have plunged cities into darkness, battering the Ukrainian grid and forcing officials to scramble for alternative power options.

The latest attack came as Ukrainian forces were pressing what appeared to be a renewed offensive in the Kursk region in western Russia. Both sides have reported fierce fighting over the past few days in Kursk, where Ukrainian troops seized about 500 square miles of territory in a surprise cross-border incursion last summer.

Russia has since regained roughly half of the territory it lost. Analysts have said the renewed offensive appears to be Ukraine’s attempt to regain momentum and demonstrate its capabilities before Trump takes office later this month.