Dozens killed as missiles hit Ukraine training base
Russia targets military facility near border with Poland
DOZENS of people were killed yesterday after Russian missiles pounded a military training base in western Ukraine.
Officials say at least 35 people died and 134 were injured in the assault on the facility near Lviv during the early hours.
Known as the International Peacekeeping and Security Centre, the base has been used to house Ukrainian troops with military instructors from the US and Nato.
The attack followed Russian threats to target foreign weapons shipments coming via Nato-member Poland that are helping Ukrainian fighters defend their country against Russia’s invasion.
More than 30 cruise missiles targeted the sprawling training facility that is less than 15 miles from the closest border point with Poland, which is also a key route for refugees fleeing the war.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Lviv had largely been spared the scale of destruction unfolding further east and become a destination for residents escaping bombarded cities and for many of the nearly 2.6 million refugees who have fled the country.
The training centre in Yavoriv appears to be the most westward target struck so far in the 18-day invasion.
The facility, which has hosted international Nato drills, symbolises what has long been a Russian complaint: that the alliance of 30 countries is moving ever closer to Russia’s borders.
Russia has demanded that
Ukraine drop its ambitions to join Nato.
Lviv governor Maksym Kozytskyi said most of the missiles fired yesterday “were shot down because the air defence system worked”. The ones that got through killed at least 35 people and injured 134 others, he said.
Russian fighters also fired at the airport in the western city of Ivano-frankivsk, 155 miles from Ukraine’s border with Slovakia and Hungary, an attack the city’s mayor said was intended “to sow panic and fear”.
The airport, which includes a military airfield as well as a runway for civilian flights, was also targeted on Friday.
Fighting also raged in multiple areas of the country overnight.
Ukrainian authorities said Russian air strikes on a monastery and a children’s resort in
the eastern Donetsk region hit places where monks and refugees were sheltering, injuring 32 people.
Another air strike hit a westwardbound train evacuating people from the east, killing one person and wounding another, Donetsk’s chief regional administrator said.
To the north, in the city of Chernihiv, one person was killed and another injured in a Russian air strike that destroyed a residential block, emergency services said.
Around the capital, Kyiv, a major political and strategic target for the invasion, fighting also intensified, with overnight shelling in the north-western suburbs and a missile strike on Sunday that destroyed a warehouse to the east.
Chief regional administrator Oleksiy Kuleba said Russian forces appeared to be trying to blockade and paralyse the capital with day and night shelling of the suburbs.
He said Russian agents are operating in the capital and its suburbs, marking out possible future targets, but vowed that any all-out assault would meet stiff resistance, saying: “We’re getting ready to defend Kyiv, and we’re prepared to fight for ourselves.”
Talks aimed at reaching a ceasefire again failed on Saturday, and the US announced plans to provide another 200 million dollars to Ukraine for weapons.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned other nations that sending equipment to bolster Ukraine’s military is “an action that makes those convoys legitimate targets”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of trying to break his country apart, as well as starting “a new stage of terror” with the alleged detention of a mayor from a city west of Mariupol.
“Ukraine will stand this test. We need time and strength to break the war machine that has come to our land,” he said during his nightly address to the nation on Saturday.
There were claims that Russian soldiers had pillaged a humanitarian convoy that was trying to reach the battered and encircled port city of Mariupol, where more than 1,500 people have died, and reports of Russian tanks firing on a nine-storey apartment building.
The first major city to fall, earlier this month, was Kherson, a vital Black Sea port of 290,000 residents.
Mr Zelenskyy said Russians were using blackmail and bribery in an attempt to force local officials to form a “pseudo-republic” in the southern Kherson region, much like those in Donetsk and Luhansk, where pro-russian separatists began fighting Ukrainian forces in 2014. One of the pretexts Russia used to invade was that it had to protect the separatist regions.
Mr Zelenskyy again deplored Nato’s refusal to declare a no-fly zone over Ukraine and said the country has sought ways to procure air defence assets, though he did not elaborate.
Nato has said that imposing a no-fly zone could lead to a wider war with Russia.
US President Joe Biden announced another $200 million in aid to Ukraine, with an additional $13 billion included in a Bill that has passed the House of Representatives and should clear the Senate within days.
Mr Zelenskyy also accused Russia of detaining the mayor of Melitopol, a city 119 miles west of Mariupol. The Ukrainian leader called on Russian forces to heed calls from demonstrators in the occupied city for the mayor’s release.
Moscow has said it will establish humanitarian corridors out of conflict zones, but Ukrainian officials have accused Russia of disrupting those paths and firing on civilians. Russian forces have hit at least two dozen hospitals and medical facilities, according to the World Health Organisation.
Ukrainian deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk said just nine of 14 agreed-upon corridors were open on Saturday, and that about 13,000 people had used them to evacuate around the country.
French and German leaders spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday in a failed attempt to reach a ceasefire.
According to the Kremlin, Putin laid out terms for ending the war.
For ending hostilities, Moscow has demanded that Ukraine drop its bid to join Nato and adopt a neutral status; acknowledge the Russian sovereignty over Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014; recognise the independence of separatist regions in the country’s east; and agree to demilitarise.
The Russian invaders appear to have struggled far more than expected against determined Ukrainian fighters. Nevertheless, Russia’s stronger military threatens to grind down Ukrainian forces.
Thousands of soldiers on both sides are believed to have been killed, along with many civilians, including at least 79 Ukrainian children, its Government says. At least 2.5 million people have fled the country, according to the United Nations refugee agency.
Meanwhile the US and China are sending top aides to Rome today as tensions between the two countries mount over the conflict. Speaking in advance of the talks, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan bluntly warned China to avoid helping Russia evade punishment from global sanctions that have hammered the Russian economy. “We will not allow that to go forward,” he said.
US officials are also accusing China of spreading Russian disinformation that could be a pretext for chemical or biological weapons attacks launched by Putin’s forces in Ukraine.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has put China in a delicate spot with two of its biggest trading partners: the US and European Union.
China needs access to these markets, yet it has also made gestures supportive of Moscow, joining with Russia in declaring a friendship with “no limits”.
In his talks with senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi, Mr Sullivan will be looking for limits in what Beijing will do for Moscow.
“I’m not going to sit here publicly and brandish threats,” he told CNN in a round of Sunday news show interviews.
“But what I will tell you is we are communicating directly and privately to Beijing that there absolutely will be consequences” if China helps Russia “backfill” its losses from the sanctions.
“We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to
Russia from these economic sanctions from any country anywhere in the world,” he said.
The White House said the talks would focus on the direct impact of Russia’s war against Ukraine on regional and global security.
Biden administration officials say Beijing is spreading false Russian claims that Ukraine was running chemical and biological weapons labs with US support.
They say China is effectively providing cover if Russia moves ahead with a biological or chemical weapons attack on Ukrainians.
When Russia starts accusing other countries of preparing to launch biological or chemical attacks, Mr Sullivan told NBC, “it’s a good tell that they may be on the cusp of doing it themselves”.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, speaking on ABC, said: “We haven’t seen anything that indicates some sort of imminent chemical or biological attack right now, but we’re watching this very, very closely”.
Ukraine will stand this test. We need time and strength to break the war machine that has come to our land