Russian strikes across Ukraine kill at least 13, including children; Poland reports airspace violation
KYIV — Russian air strikes killed at least 13 people across Ukraine overnight, including children, in attacks that extended from the capital Kyiv to the western city of Lviv, according to Ukrainian officials. The strikes forced neighbouring Poland to scramble fighter jets and later report a violation of its airspace.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned just hours before the attacks that Moscow was preparing for a "massive attack," and later wrote that Russia had fired 70 rockets and 280 drones, according to reports from several news agencies.
Explosions were reported over Kyiv in the early hours of Thursday, with one person killed in the capital, according to the city's military administration. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said Russia struck Kyiv with ballistic missiles, urging residents to stay in shelters and reporting that several non-residential sites had caught fire.
In Kryvyi Rih, President Zelenskyy's hometown, at least six people were killed, including two girls aged 5 and 12, according to Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the local defence council. Vilkul said the missile, launched from Russia's Voronezh region, hit a private home where a large family lived. He described the night as "a dark night" and warned the death toll could rise as emergency workers cleared rubble.
A separate report from a local official in the village of Radushne, a few kilometres from Kryvyi Rih, said a six-year-old girl and two boys, aged 11 and 17, were among six killed when a Russian ballistic missile hit the area. That official said two private homes were completely destroyed, and eight people were wounded, including an 84-year-old woman taken to hospital and two children pulled from the rubble alive.
In Lviv, near the Polish border, Russian missiles damaged two apartment buildings and injured six people, according to local officials. Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said multiple people were injured, with some trapped under a building, and residents were helping rescuers clear debris.
Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk was heading to the site of a 10-metre crater after what Polish armed forces described as a violation of Polish airspace during Russia's attack on Lviv. The military said they had mobilised on-duty fighter jets during the strikes, after detecting at least a dozen missiles over western Ukraine that could have posed a threat to Polish airspace. They located the crater in a field about two kilometres from the village of Tarnawa-Kolonia in Lublin province, and secured the site.
The attacks come as President Zelenskyy returns from the United States, where he said President Donald Trump agreed to give Ukraine licences for Patriot missiles, according to his statements reported by multiple outlets.