LVIV, Ukraine (Reuters) -An overnight Russian drone and missile attack on Ukraine’s western city of Lviv close to the border with NATO member Poland killed seven people, including three children, local officials said on Wednesday.
The strikes, which also damaged historic buildings in the heart of the city, came a day after the war’s deadliest single attack this year, when Russia hit a military institute with two ballistic missiles, killing 50 and wounding hundreds more.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said allies could help stop the “terror” by providing more air defenses, and he repeated calls for partners to allow the use of long-range Western weapons deeper into Russian territory.
“Everyone who persuades partners to give Ukraine more long-range capability to respond to terror fairly is working to prevent exactly these kinds of Russian terrorist strikes on Ukrainian cities,” Zelenskiy said.
Russia, which has yet to comment on the strikes on Lviv or on Tuesday’s attack on Poltava, said on Wednesday Moscow would deliver an “extremely painful” response in the event of long-range strikes on Russian territory by Ukraine.
Ukraine’s air force said it had shot down seven out of 13 missiles and 22 out of 29 drones across the country during Russia’s latest attack.
Among those killed in Lviv were a nine-year-old and a 14-year-old, regional governor Maksym Kozytskyi said on the Telegram messaging app. Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said the attack had injured around 40 people.
Lviv city mayor Andriy Sadovyi told national television that more than 70 structures, including schools, homes and clinics, had been damaged.
DAMAGE TO HISTORIC HERITAGE
Kozytskyi said the count included at least seven local architectural monuments – all buildings located in the city’s historic area and UNESCO buffer zone, which aims to protect World Heritage property.
Russia also attacked the city of Kryvyi Rih on Wednesday, injuring five people, including a 10-year-old child, Dnipropetrovsk regional governor Serhiy Lysak said. The attack damaged four educational institutions, a hotel, a pharmacy and other shops, he added.
Russia has been pounding Ukraine with hundreds of missiles and drones in the past 10 days, in what some Russian military bloggers call Moscow’s response to a recent incursion by Ukrainian forces into its territory that is continuing.
On Wednesday Poland scrambled aircraft for the third time in eight days to maintain the safety of its airspace, the Polish armed forces’ operational command said. Lviv is only about 70 km (43 miles) from the Polish border.
“This is another very busy night for the entire air defense system in Poland due to … the long-range aviation of the Russian Federation carrying out strikes,” the command said on X.
Moscow has previously denied targeting civilians during its full-scale invasion of Ukraine — which began more than 30 months ago – but says Ukrainian military, energy and transport infrastructure are legitimate military targets.
(Reporting by Andriy Perun in Lviv and Valentyn Ogirenko, Gleb Garanich, Pavel Polityuk and Anastasiia Malenko in Kyiv; Writing by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Gareth Jones)
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