Russia Strikes Ukraine: Eight Killed, Poland Activates Air Defences

Russian air strikes killed at least eight people across Ukraine on Thursday, including one in Kyiv, while attacks extended to the western city of Lviv and prompted neighbouring Poland to scramble fighter jets to secure its airspace.

The strikes came as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy returned from the United States, where he said President Donald Trump had agreed to give Ukraine licences for Patriot missiles. Earlier, Zelenskiy had warned that a major Russian attack was likely, saying the protection of Ukrainians depended on allies’ willingness to provide anti-missile defences.

Air raid alerts sounded across most regions of Ukraine, with a Reuters witness saying explosions were heard in Kyiv. A few non-residential sites caught fire in the capital, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app.

One person was killed and two others were injured in Kyiv, emergency services said. Six more people, including two children, were killed in the Dnipropetrovsk region, while one person was killed in Poltava, regional officials said.

In Zelenskiy’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih, two girls aged five and 12 were among the six people killed, with eight injured in what Oleksandr Vilkul, the city’s defence council head, said was a direct strike by a Russian Iskander-M ballistic missile.

"A dark night," Vilkul said on Telegram, adding that the missile, launched from Russia's Voronezh region, struck the home of a large family and warned that the death toll could increase as emergency workers clear away rubble.

In Lviv, close to Poland, rescue workers were searching through rubble to reach those trapped after Russian missiles damaged two apartment buildings and injured 26 people, officials said.

"It is important that our partners fully understand what is happening and that the protection of people's lives depends directly on their willingness," Zelenskiy wrote on Telegram.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Thursday that its forces had struck what it called military facilities across Ukraine, in areas from Kyiv to Lviv and Dnipropetrovsk, as well as three cargo ships. According to Reuters, the claims could not be independently verified.

Poland, a member of the European Union and NATO, scrambled fighter jets to protect its airspace amid Russian air strikes, its armed forces said on X.

Polish police in the Lublin region close to Ukraine’s border said on X they received a report of a loud bang heard in Bilgoraj county and discovered a crater and scattered debris from an unidentified object in a field.

Ukraine-Russia strikes extend beyond battlefield

A warehouse belonging to Russian online retailer Wildberries caught fire in the western city of Penza after what regional governor Oleg Melnichenko said was a Ukrainian drone attack.

One person was injured and about 200 people were evacuated from the site, he said on Telegram, a day after the company evacuated another facility in central Russia. Another Wildberries facility in Sarapul, in Russia’s Udmurtia region, also caught fire after the company said it was hit by a drone attack on Thursday.

Reuters reported that drone strikes have damaged nearly a dozen Wildberries warehouses recently, destroying about 10 per cent of storage capacity and causing losses for tens of thousands of small businesses using the platform.

The attacks have added to difficulties for ordinary Russians, some of whom rely on online sales as their main source of income, as Ukraine continues targeting energy facilities and refineries, deepening the fuel crisis in the world’s largest country by area.

Russia’s biggest bank, Sberbank, has warned it may have to increase loan-loss provisions as attacks on Wildberries affect the finances of online retailers and their suppliers.

Russia’s defence ministry said it had downed a total of 258 drones overnight. That figure covers Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.

Reuters reported that it could not independently verify the reports. Both Russia and Ukraine deny targeting civilians in the war following Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour in February 2022.