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Ukraine’s president has vowed to retaliate after a Russian missile attack on Lviv killed at least four people, destroyed apartment buildings and shattered the relative calm in the western city that sits near the EU border.
“There will definitely be a response to the enemy. A strong one,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote in a tweet, sharing drone footage of the aftermath of the attack in the early hours of Thursday.
The governor of Lviv, Maksym Kozytskyi, confirmed at that at least four people were killed in the in the attack and at least 34 people injured.
“This is the largest attack on the civilian infrastructure of Lviv since the beginning of the full-scale invasion,” said the city’s mayor, Andriy Sadovyi. He posted videos showing rescuers sifting through debris of a destroyed four-story residential building and a photograph of men carrying a body bag. About 60 apartments and 50 vehicles were damaged, he said, adding that displaced residents had been moved to a local hotel.
“The city that meets Europeans every day on the border with Poland and has become a refuge for thousands of Ukrainians since the beginning of the war” had been deliberately targeted, said Serhiy Kruk, head of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine, as his workers searched for survivors in the rubble. “The Russians have again acted vilely and cynically, shelling a border city of Ukraine, for the sake of possible intimidation of Europe.”
Ukraine’s air force said Kalibr cruise missiles had been launched from warships and a submarine in the Black Sea in the dark of night, travelling north through the Dnipro river channel before veering west to Lviv. Ukraine’s air defence units destroyed seven out of 10 missiles, but three hit their targets.
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Russia’s defence ministry said it targeted western-made armoured vehicles in the strike, “hit all the assigned targets, and dealt a significant blow to the enemy’s strategic reserves”.
State news agency Ria Novosti cited an anonymous source at the ministry as saying the strike had hit a barracks that was home to Ukrainian soldiers and “foreign mercenaries”, as well as what it said were “highly likely” to be UK-made Challenger tanks.
The defence ministry, which has been heavily criticised even in some hardline pro-war circles in Russia for its often outlandish statements, did not provide any evidence to support its claims or address the civilian casualties from the strike.
Ukraine’s air force reiterated Kyiv’s demand for western fighter jets to better defend itself from Russian air attacks.
Western air defence systems, including American-made Patriot systems, have performed well since they arrived in April, saving the Ukrainian capital from 18 large missile barrages in May alone. But there are not enough of the systems to cover the entire country.
Zelenskyy and his government have pleaded for F-16 fighter jets since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February last year, pointing to their enemy’s advantage, though not total superiority, in the skies. President Joe Biden said in May that the US would support a western coalition to provide the American-made aircraft and train Ukrainian pilots on them.
In an interview with CNN this week, Zelenskyy acknowledged that the counteroffensive to reclaim lost territory was moving more slowly than he had hoped and said his army would be able to move faster had the US and European leaders sent “all the weapons and materiel for that” earlier.
Western battle tanks, engineering equipment and artillery systems have flowed into the country in recent months. But many of Ukraine’s bigger requests, such as greater air support, have lagged.
Admiral Rob Bauer, chair of the military committee of Nato, said this week that the jets would arrive in autumn at the earliest.
“Militarily it makes sense, but because of training [and] logistics it is not realistic in the short term,” he said.
Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a local TV interview on Monday that his country would probably not receive the first F-16s until early next year. He said that two unspecified western countries had agreed to train Ukrainian pilots but had delayed the training which was set to begin last month.
Additional reporting from Max Seddon