Russia's Latest Attack Is on 'NATO's Doorstep'

Ukraine facility near the Polish border is bombarded with missiles
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Mar 13, 2022 7:30 AM CDT
Russia's Latest Attack Is on 'NATO's Doorstep'
Ukrainian servicemen, center, distributes water to people in Mariupol, Ukraine, Sunday, March 6, 2022.   (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

Waves of Russian missiles pounded a military training base close to Ukraine’s western border with NATO member Poland, killing 35 people, per the AP. The strike near Lviv followed Russian threats to target foreign weapon shipments that are helping Ukrainian fighters defend their country against Russia's grinding invasion. The attack "brought the war perilously closer to NATO’s doorstep," per the New York Times. More than 30 Russian cruise missiles targeted the sprawling training facility that is less than 15 miles from the closest border point with Poland, according to the governor of Ukraine’s western Lviv region. Poland is a key location for routing Western military aid to Ukraine.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Lviv had largely been spared the scale of destruction unfolding further east and become a destination for residents escaping bombarded cities and for many of the nearly 2.6 million refugees who have fled the country. The training center in Yavoriv appears to be the most westward target struck so far in the 18-day invasion. The facility, also known as the International Peacekeeping and Security Center, has long been used to train Ukrainian military personnel, often with instructors from the United States and other NATO countries.

Lviv governor Maksym Kozytskyi said most of the missiles fired Sunday “were shot down because the air defense system worked.” The ones that got through killed at least 35 people and wounded 134, he said. Russian fighters also fired at the airport in the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk, 155 miles from Ukraine’s border with Slovakia and Hungary, an attack the city’s mayor said was intended “to sow panic and fear.” Fighting also raged in multiple areas of the country overnight. Ukrainian authorities said Russian airstrikes on a monastery and a children's resort in the eastern Donetsk region hit spots where monks and refugees were sheltering, wounding 32 people.

(More Russia-Ukraine war stories.)

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