Russian Missiles Kill Children Across Ukraine as Crater Found Deep in Poland
A crater near a Polish village, 100km from the border, points to another line crossed in Moscow's air war
By Ingrid "Shortwave" Frost
The dead in Kryvyi Rih on Thursday included two girls, ages 5 and 12, killed when a Russian missile hit the central Ukrainian city, according to the head of its military administration. It was one strike among dozens. Russian forces launched more than 70 missiles and 280 drones in an overnight barrage that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had warned was coming hours in advance, hitting Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava and reaching as far west as Lviv. At least 13 to 14 people were killed nationwide, officials in Kyiv reported, with dozens more wounded.
The attack forced Poland to scramble fighter jets to secure its own airspace. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said an unidentified object that gouged a 10-meter-wide crater near the village of Tarnawa Kolonia, some 100 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, was probably Russian — the kind of debris that keeps landing in NATO territory as Moscow's bombardment intensifies. Tusk was preparing to travel to the impact site.
European Council President António Costa called the overnight strikes proof that "Russia's aggression is a threat to the security of Europe as a whole," noting the airspace violation in the same breath as the missile barrage.
The blitz is part of what has become an almost daily bombardment of Ukrainian cities, with Moscow appearing to press its advantage as Kyiv runs short on Western-supplied anti-ballistic missile defenses, a shortage Ukrainian officials have flagged for months without full resupply. Whether that pattern changes likely depends less on statements from Brussels than on what NATO governments are willing to ship next — and how fast.
— Compiled from reporting by The Guardian, BBC World, NPR News and Al Jazeera.
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