Moscow said its forces attacked what it called military plants in retaliation for attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Thursday that Russia “will continue to increase pressure on the kyiv regime to achieve the set goals.”

Ukraine accused Moscow of attacking civilian areas and said it would be a mistake to equate the actions of the “aggressor and a country that defends itself.”

kyiv metro authorities said 52,500 people, including 4,500 children, took shelter in metro stations overnight, which they said was the highest number in “recent years.”

Among the places hit by the attacks was a high-rise apartment block on the city’s left bank in the Darnitskyi district of southeast kyiv, where two missiles caused devastation.

A missile left a giant crater next to a daycare center and the surrounding buildings were destroyed by fire and their metal balconies twisted.

The second missile landed a few steps away and hit the end of a nine-story apartment block. It has collapsed, sliding off the building’s façade, becoming a pile of concrete. A local told the BBC that several people were missing and may have taken shelter in the basement.

Rescuers tried to dig through the rubble to reach them while relatives watched crying.

Svitlana, who lives next to the attacked building, told the BBC that she was hiding in the hallway during the airstrike and heard the explosions.

“It wasn’t scary,” he shrugged, “because I’ve been through all this before.” She later revealed that she had been seriously injured in another Russian attack on another city in which her mother was killed. Two years later, his son was killed in combat fighting for Ukraine.

Oleksiy, his face covered in cuts and blood, told the BBC he had gone outside to smoke after hearing the first missile, then the second landed and he was hit by flying glass.

“This is not Russian retaliation for the Ukrainian attacks,” he said, dismissing Moscow’s explanation for its latest attack. “They started this war. This is a residential area. And they attacked it.”