Waves of Russian missiles pounded a military training base close to Ukraine’s western border with NATO member Poland, killing 35 people. The strike followed Russian threats to target foreign weapon shipments that are helping Ukrainian fighters defend their country against Russia’s grinding invasion.
More than 30 Russian cruise missiles targeted the sprawling training facility that is less than 25km from the closest border point with Poland, Lviv Governor Maksym Kozytskyi said.
Poland is a key location for routing Western military aid to Ukraine.
Photo: AFP
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Lviv had largely been spared the scale of destruction unfolding further east and become a destination for residents escaping bombarded cities and for many of the nearly 2.6 million refugees who have fled the country.
The training center in Yavoriv appears to be the most westward target struck so far in the 18-day invasion. The facility, also known as the International Peacekeeping and Security Center, has long been used to train Ukrainian military personnel, often with instructors from the US and other NATO countries.
It has also hosted international NATO drills.
Photo: AP
Kozytskyi said most of the missiles fired yesterday “were shot down because the air defense system worked.”
The ones that got through through killed at least 35 people and wounded 134, he said.
Russian fighters also fired at the airport in the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk, which is less than 150km north of Romania and 250km from Hungary, countries that also are NATO allies.
The airport, which includes a military airfield as well as a runway for civilian flights, was also targeted on Friday.
Fighting also raged in multiple areas of the country overnight. Ukrainian authorities said Russian airstrikes on a monastery and a children’s resort in the eastern Donetsk region hit spots where monks and refugees were sheltering, wounding 32 people.
Another airstrike hit a westward-bound train evacuating people from the east, killing one person and injuring another, Donetsk’s chief regional administrator said.
To the north, in the city of Chernihiv, one person was killed and another injured in a Russian airstrike that destroyed a residential block, emergency services said.
Around the capital, Kyiv, fighting also intensified, with overnight shelling in the northwestern suburbs and a missile strike yesterday that destroyed a warehouse to the east.
In Irpin, a suburb about 20km northwest of central Kyiv, bodies lay out in the open on Saturday on streets and in a park.
“When I woke up in the morning, everything was covered in smoke, everything was dark. We don’t know who is shooting and where,” resident Serhy Protsenko said as he walked through his neighborhood.
Talks aimed at reaching a ceasefire again failed on Saturday and the US announced plans to provide another US$200 million to Ukraine for weapons.
Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Ryabkov warned other nations that sending equipment to bolster Ukraine’s military was “an action that makes those convoys legitimate targets.”
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