The chief of Russia's general staff told President Vladimir Putin on Thursday that Russian forces had taken control of the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kupiansk, but Ukraine's military denied the city had changed hands.

Russian airstrikes hit two apartment buildings in Ukraine overnight, killing more than two dozen people including three children, in a rare large-scale assault on the west of the country that prompted NATO to scramble fighter jets over neighboring Poland and Romania.

Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll and the Army’s top general have been sent to Ukraine by the Trump administration, according to a U.S. official.

A deadly Russian barrage of missiles and drones in Ukraine came as President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Turkey in a bid to revive peace talks to end his country’s war with Russia.

At least 26 people were killed in a Russian drone and missile attack overnight that hit apartment buildings in the western Ukrainian city of Ternopil, Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday.

NATO scrambled fighter jets in Polish and Romanian airspace overnight as Russia carried out massive drone and missile strikes in western Ukraine, killing at least 25 people, three of them children.

At least 20 people were killed and many more wounded in the western city of Ternopil when a missile hit a residential building, the authorities there said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says an overnight Russian attack killed nine people, wounded dozens more and damaged energy and transport infrastructure. STAY UP TO DATE WITH THE LATEST NEWS BY SUBSCRIBING TO MORNING REPORT NEWSLETTER “Every brazen attack against ordinary life shows that the pressure on Russia is insufficient.