Early Wednesday morning, a Russian missile attack on the historic city of Lviv in western Ukraine killed seven people, including three children. This attack shocked the city, which has mostly been safe from the ongoing war.
The strike happened just a day after another deadly attack in the city of Poltava, where 53 people were killed and 271 were injured. These recent attacks have been some of the deadliest since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began over two years ago.
In Lviv, 40 people were injured in the missile strike. Ukraine’s Interior Affairs Minister Ihor Klymenko said the number of deaths might increase as rescue workers continue to search through the rubble. The attack also damaged several historic buildings in Lviv, including some protected by UNESCO.
Residents described the horror of the attack. Yelyzaveta, a 27-year-old Lviv resident, said she heard “terrible, inhuman screams” and quickly took shelter in her basement. Another resident, Anastasia Grynko, who had moved to Lviv from Dnipro for safety, narrowly survived. “The rocket hit our house. Everything was blown away,” she said. “I was miraculously in the corridor at the time, so I wasn’t badly hurt.”
Lviv’s Mayor Andriy Sadovy warned people to take cover as the city’s air defenses tried to stop the missiles. Ukrainian forces said Russia launched 13 missiles and 29 drones across Ukraine that night, managing to shoot down some of them, but others got through, causing significant damage.
In another city, Kryvyi Rih, a piece of a downed missile hit a hotel, injuring five people and destroying part of the building. “The hotel is destroyed from the first to the third floor. Thank God, everyone is alive,” said Oleksandr Vilkul, the city’s leader.
Ukrainian leaders condemned these attacks on civilians. President Volodymyr Zelensky called them “Russian terrorist strikes on Ukrainian cities.” Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal promised that “the enemy will pay for what it has done” and urged Western countries to provide Ukraine with more air defense systems and long-range weapons to fight back.
The weapons given to Ukraine by Western allies often have restrictions that prevent their use against targets inside Russia. However, after these recent attacks, Ukrainian officials are asking for these restrictions to be lifted so they can better defend themselves and strike back.
These Russian missile strikes seem to be in response to a recent Ukrainian attack in Russia’s Kursk region that caught Russian troops off guard. As the war escalates, the number of civilian casualties continues to grow, with cities like Lviv and Poltava suffering severe damage.
The world is watching closely as the situation in Ukraine worsens, with increasing calls for more support to protect the people and cultural sites in the country.
