Kyiv, July 31:
A Russian ballistic missile and drone barrage across Ukraine overnight into Thursday killed at least eight civilians, including children, and wounded more than 50 others, officials said.
The blitz expanded Russia’s almost daily bombardment of Ukrainian cities as Moscow apparently looked to exploit Kyiv’s critical shortage of Western-supplied anti-ballistic missile defences.
NATO member Poland, meanwhile, was looking into Ukrainian reports that a Russian cruise missile entered its airspace during the onslaught in an incident that could deepen tensions between the Western military alliance and Moscow. European countries, mistrustful of the Kremlin’s wider ambitions, fear that the war in Ukraine could spill into their territory.
The barrage spanned regions across Ukraine, including areas by the border with Poland that are far from the front line in the east of the country and where Ukraine is believed to store and manufacture weapons for its fight against Russia’s more than 4-year-old invasion. Its long-range drones and missiles have battered Russia’s oil sector, causing a fuel crisis.
The attack came two days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met in Washington with US President Donald Trump and representatives of American defence companies, as he pleaded for swifter and bigger deliveries of Patriot air defence systems that are the best way to stop Russia’s ballistic assaults.
The Iran war has drained stockpiles of the American-made interceptors. Trump has promised to grant Ukraine licenses to build its own Patriots, but production could take a long time to set up.
“Given the critical shortage of air defence missiles from our partners, our warriors are accomplishing truly incredible things, demonstrating a very high level of professionalism,” Zelenskyy said on social media.
“This Russian terror once again proves that protection against the Russian missile threat is the most important task when it comes to saving the lives of our people,” he said.
Zelenskyy said at least 10 Ukrainian regions were attacked, with dozens of homes, businesses and infrastructure facilities destroyed or damaged.
Russia launched more than 70 missiles, a significant number of them ballistic, he said, along with more than 280 attack drones, of which more than 260 were intercepted.
The Russian Defence Ministry said it aimed at Ukrainian air bases, arms factories and military telecommunications and logistics facilities.
The targets included drone production factories and storage depots, a missile plant, an aircraft repair plant, a factory making electronic components, and a chemical plant, it said.
In the Dnipropetrovsk region, the Russian attack killed six people and wounded 10, Oleksandr Hanzha, head of the regional military administration, said.
Children were among the dead, he said on Telegram — a 6-year-old girl and boys aged 11 and 17 in the area of Kryvyi Rih, Zelenskyy’s hometown.
The children’s parents were killed in the same attack, but two more children were pulled alive from under the rubble, Zelenskyy said.
“It was an ordinary home, blown to smithereens by a ballistic missile … ” he said on X.
In Kyiv, Russian forces struck the capital with ballistic missiles, killing a 31-year-old man and wounding two others, the National Police press service said.
A cruise missile attack struck the western city of Lviv, wounding 34 people, including three children aged 6, 13 and 15, according to Maksym Kozytskyi, head of the Lviv regional military administration. Emergency crews were still searching through rubble.
In the Poltava region, a drone hit company warehouses, killing one person, regional military head Vitalii Diakivnych said.
Russian forces also dropped three powerful glide bombs on an industrial zone in the southern city of Kherson on Thursday morning, killing a 56-year-old man, local officials said.
Poland looks into whether a Russian cruise missile crossed its border
A Russian Kh-101 cruise missile crossed into Poland overnight, violating NATO airspace, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on X.
Sybiha called it a clear demonstration that strengthening Ukraine’s air defence is urgent and serves as a guarantee of wider European protection.
Polish authorities did not immediately confirm Sybiha’s comments.
An unidentified object flying westward in the middle of the night was tracked in Polish airspace, and an F-16 fighter jet was launched to identify and intercept it, the Operational Command of the Polish Armed Forces said on X.
The object disappeared from radar screens before it could be identified, the command said. A helicopter flew to its last known location, where the crew discovered a probable impact site in a farming area in the Lublin province, the command wrote.
Zelenskyy met with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Lublin on Wednesday to discuss defence issues.
Polish authorities have not confirmed what, if anything, crashed. Tusk travelled to the area Thursday morning to inspect the site.