Russian Air Strikes on Lviv and Kiev: Casualties and Destruction

A Russian airstrike on Lviv, a city in western Ukraine near the border with NATO member Poland, left three people dead, more than 30 injured and destroyed historic buildings in the heart of the city, regional officials said on Wednesday.

The attacks came a day after the deadliest attack of this year’s war, when Russia hit a military institute in the central city of Poltava with two ballistic missiles, killing 50 people and wounding hundreds more.

According to initial information, a 14-year-old girl was among the dead in the drone and missile attack in Lviv, and five children were injured, the governor of the region, Maksym Kozycki, said in a press release on Telegram.

Andriy Sadovyi, the mayor of Lviv, which is the administrative center of the wider Lviv region, said that among the dead were a nurse-midwife and a man, and that 35 people received medical assistance.

In a video posted on Telegram that showed the mayor amid the rubble of a destroyed building, he said more than 50 buildings, from schools to homes and clinics, most of them in the heart of the city, had been damaged. A Reuters witness in the city also reported damage to buildings.

Neighboring Poland scrambled aircraft for the third time in eight days on Wednesday to maintain the security of its airspace, the military’s operational command said. “This is another very busy night for the entire air defense system in Poland due to … long-range Russian air strikes,” the command said at X.

Russia also struck Kiev and several other regions with missiles on Wednesday, but no immediate damage was reported. Russia has been bombarding Ukraine with hundreds of missiles and drones over the past 10 days, in what some Russian military bloggers are calling Moscow’s response to Kiev’s recent invasion of its territory.

Russia has not yet commented on the Poltava attacks and Wednesday’s attacks on Lviv and Kiev. Moscow has often said its attacks are aimed at Ukrainian military, energy and transport infrastructure, not civilians.

(Based on information from the agency.)