Poland activates air force as western Ukraine and Kyiv come under ‘massive’ Russian attack

Poland activates air force as western Ukraine and Kyiv come under ‘massive’ Russian attack

the Guardian

Poland says Russian missile targeting Ukraine’s Lviv region violated its airspace while Kyiv suffers third pre-dawn attack in four days

Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv and the western region of Lviv have come under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials have said, and Polish forces have also been placed on heightened readiness.

Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with Sunday’s early morning strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut.

A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people has also become a new flashpoint between the two countries, with President Vladimir Putin seeking to tie Kyiv to the attack; Ukraine has denied involvement and Islamic State has claimed responsibility.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on Saturday accused Putin of seeking to “shift the blame” on to Kyiv for the concert hall attack.

“What happened yesterday in Moscow is obvious: Putin and the other thugs are just trying to blame it on someone else,” said Zelenskiy in response to Putin’s assertion that the suspects had been fleeing towards Ukraine.

“They have brought hundreds of thousands of their own terrorists here, on Ukrainian land, to fight against us, and they don’t care about what is happening inside their own country,” Zelenskiy added.

“That low-life Putin, instead of dealing with his Russian citizens, addressing them, was silent for a full 24 hours, thinking about how to tie this to Ukraine,” he said. “It’s all absolutely predictable.”

Officials in Ukraine said Russia had launched its third pre-dawn attack on Ukraine in the past four days, and the second to target the capital of Kyiv.

“Explosions in the capital,” Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, posted on Telegram on Sunday. “Air defence is working. Do not leave shelters.”

The Lviv region’s governor, Maksym Kozytskyi, said Stryi district, south of the city of Lviv, near the Polish border, had also been attacked.

Ukraine was earlier placed under a nationwide air alert that warned of cruise missiles being launched from Russian Tu-95MS strategic bombers. The alert was lifted about two hours later.

In Lviv, the mayor, Andriy Sadovy, said about 20 missiles and seven Iranian-made Shahed drones were fired at the region. “They targeted critical infrastructure facilities.”

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