Russian missiles struck a city in Ukraine, resulting in at least 14 fatalities and several injuries among civilians.

At least 14 civilians have been killed in a recent Russian missile attack on the Ukraine. The attack came as the U.S. is in the process of approving a $60 billion aid package to Ukraine.

Russian missiles struck a city in Ukraine, resulting in at least 14 fatalities and several injuries among civilians.

Authorities said that at least 14 people were killed after three Russian missiles struck an eight-story apartment building in the downtown district of Chernihiv, a city in northern Ukraine, on Wednesday.

The morning attack injured at least 61 individuals, two of them were children, according to Ukrainian rescue services. With a population of over 250,000, Chernihiv is located close to the borders with Belarus and Russia, approximately 90 miles north of the capital, Kyiv.

The latest Russian bombardment came as the war stretched into its third year and approached what could be a critical juncture as a lack of further military support from Ukraine's Western partners increasingly leaves it at the mercy of the Kremlin's bigger forces.

Through the winter months, Russia made no dramatic advance along the 620-mile front line, focusing instead on attritional warfare. However, Ukraine’s shortage of artillery ammunition, troops and armored vehicles has allowed the Russians to gradually push forward, military analysts say.

A crucial element for Ukraine is the holdup in Washington of approval for an aid package that includes roughly $60 billion for Ukraine. House Speaker Mike Johnson said Sunday that he would try to move the package forward this week.

Ukraine’s need is now acute, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.

"The Russians are breaking out of positional warfare and beginning to restore maneuver to the battlefield because of the delays in the provision of U.S. military assistance to Ukraine," the ISW said in an assessment late Tuesday.

"Ukraine cannot hold the present lines now without the rapid resumption of U.S. assistance, particularly air defense and artillery that only the U.S. can provide rapidly and at scale," it said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pleaded with Western countries to provide his country with more air defense equipment, including more surface-to-air Patriot guided missile systems. He said the Chernihiv strike "would not have happened if Ukraine had received enough air defense equipment and if the world’s determination to counter Russian terror was also sufficient."

Zelenskyy told PBS in an interview broadcast earlier this week that Ukraine recently ran out of air defense missiles while it was defending against a major missile and drone attack that destroyed one of Ukraine’s largest power plants, part of a recent Russian campaign targeting energy infrastructure.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba repeated Zelenskyy’s appeal for more help as he prepared to attend a Group of Seven foreign ministers’ meeting in Italy.

"We need at least seven more Patriot batteries to protect our cities and economic centers from destruction," Kuleba told German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung in an interview published Wednesday. "Why is it so difficult to find seven Patriot batteries?"

Ukrainian forces are digging in, building fortifications in anticipation of a major Russian offensive that Kyiv officials say could come as early as next month.

Ukraine is using long-range drone and missile strikes behind Russian lines which are designed to disrupt Moscow’s war machine.

Russia’s defense ministry said Wednesday that a Ukrainian drone was shot down over the Tatarstan region early Wednesday. That's the same area that was targeted in early April by Ukraine's deepest strike so far inside Russia, about 745 miles east of Ukraine.

Ukrainian drone developers have been extending the weapons’ range.

Another Ukrainian drone was shot down over the Mordovia region, roughly 220 miles east of Moscow, the ministry said. That is 430 miles from the Ukrainian border.

About an hour before that Mordovia attack, Russia’s civil aviation authority halted flights at airports in two of the country’s largest cities, Nizhny Novgorod and Tatarstan's Kazan, because of safety concerns.

Also, unconfirmed reports said a Ukrainian missile struck an airfield in occupied Crimea. Neither Russian nor Ukrainian officials confirmed the strike, but local authorities temporarily closed a road where the airfield is located. Russian news agency Tass quoted the local mayor as saying windows in a mosque and a private house in the region were shattered in a blast there.