Russia strikes base near Polish border, killing at least 35
By Valerie Hopkins and Marc Santora
NOVOYAVORIVSK — Russian warplanes fired about 30 cruise missiles at a Ukrainian military base near the Polish border, local officials said Sunday (13), launching a furious and sustained air assault against a target that brought the war even closer to NATO’s doorstep.
Five hours after the attack, the fires at the base were still raging. Dozens of people injured in the attack were raced to area hospitals. A Ukrainian soldier on the base who was not authorized to speak publicly said that there was a shortage there of tourniquets and other essential medical equipment.
The head of the Lviv regional military administration, Maksym Kozytskyi, said that at least 35 people were killed and 134 were wounded. They included military personnel and civilians. The Ukrainian emergency services said they were doing search-and-rescue operations.
Ukrainian air defence systems intercepted 22 of the missiles, according to officials, but others struck the base.
“The air defence system worked; a number of them were shot down,” Kozytskyi said at a news conference. But he repeated calls for NATO to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine, a step that Western leaders have refused to take out of concern that it could draw them into a direct military confrontation with Russia.
Ukrainian officials said the missiles were fired from Russian fighter jets flying from Saratov, in southwestern Russia. Their target was the International Peacekeeping and Security Centre, less than a dozen miles from the Polish border.
Until February, American forces were at the base as part of a NATO mission focused on training the Ukrainian army. They withdrew days before the Russian invasion.
At the same time, however, the Pentagon dispatched 5,000 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division to Poland to provide reassurance to a pivotal NATO ally. The number of American troops in Poland has grown since then.
Throughout the war, the Pentagon reiterated that the troops would not enter Ukraine but were there to help the Polish government deal with refugees fleeing over the border.
Well into the third week of the war, Ukraine’s air defences have bedevilled Russian warplanes, shooting down missiles and some Russian aircraft. With NATO so far unwilling to impose a no-fly zone, the Ukrainian military said in a statement last week that “we will close the sky ourselves.”
Poland has been the main transit point for Ukrainian refugees fleeing to the West, and for arms shipments and foreign fighters traveling in the other direction, into Ukraine. The attack Sunday followed a Russian threat to directly attack the weapons shipments from Ukraine’s Western allies, labelling them “legitimate targets”.
On Sunday, Lviv’s mayor, Andriy Sadovyi, appealed directly to allies in a Facebook post, calling on them to “close the skies of Europe”.
“Joe Biden, Jens Stoltenberg, do you understand that war is closer than you imagine?” he wrote. “Russia is already on your border.”
-New York Times