Rocket Attacks Shake Security of Lviv

No city in Ukraine is safe now, new arrival says
By Bob Cronin,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 26, 2022 5:50 PM CDT
Strikes Hit Lviv, Where Ukrainians Felt Safer
Smoke rises in the air in Lviv, western Ukraine, hit by Russian rocket strikes Saturday.   (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

Multiple rockets struck Lviv on Saturday, injuring at least five people and unnerving the western Ukraine city that people have fled to for its relative safety during the Russian invasion. An oil depot and a factory linked to the military were hit, the regional governor said. A large plume of black smoke rose from the area, which includes residences, for hours, the AP reports. Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said "infrastructure facilities," but no homes, were damaged, per the Washington Post.

The attacks took place while President Biden was in Warsaw, 200 miles or so away. "I think that with today's strikes, the aggressor is giving his greetings to President Biden," Sadovyi said. Olana Ukrainets, a 34-year-old IT worker who arrived from heavily bombed Kharkiv, said she sometimes stayed in bed when air raid alarms went off, feeling safer in Lviv. She'll take cover next time. "None of the Ukrainian cities are safe now," she said. Other developments involved:

  • A nuclear warning: A top defense official laid out scenarios in which Russia would employ nuclear weapons—mainly, in response to a threat to the nation's existence, he said. Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chief of the Russian Security Council, discussed "our determination to defend the independence and sovereignty of our country" in an interview with state media. The interview took place before Biden said Russia's president should not continue in power.
  • Lend-lease: The chief of staff to Ukraine's president said Western nations should set up a lend-lease program like the one under which the US supplied Allies during World War II. "We need a full lend lease," Andriy Yermak said in a speech, per the AP, saying his country "is reviving those principles that gave life to current Western civilization."
  • Memorial attacks: Ukraine's foreign minister criticized a Russian strike on a Holocaust memorial site. "Why Russia keeps attacking Holocaust memorials in Ukraine?" Dmytro Kuleba tweeted, per CNN. He said a Menorah monument in Kharkiv, dedicated to "the memory of over 15,000 Jews murdered by the Nazis," was damaged, adding that he expects a denunciation from Israel. Russian forces also struck the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center in Kyiv this month; an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 people were shot there by the Nazis.
(More Russia-Ukraine war stories.)

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