A military base near the Polish border in western Ukraine, hitherto relatively untouched by Russian strikes, was shelled overnight, killing at least 35 local authorities said on Sunday, while southern country continues to be shelled and Kiev fears an encirclement.
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This military base is located in Yavoriv, about forty kilometers northwest of Lviv, where many displaced people have flocked, and about twenty kilometers from the border with Poland, a NATO member country. It has served in recent years as a training ground for Ukrainian forces under the supervision of foreign instructors, notably American and Canadian.
“Russia attacked the International Center for the Maintenance of Peace and Security. Foreign instructors work there,” said Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, without specifying whether they were present at the time of the strikes.
“This is a new terrorist attack against peace and security near the EU-NATO border. We must act to stop this. Close the sky!”, he continued, repeating Kiev’s request to create an exclusion zone above Ukraine, which NATO refuses to do for fear of widening the conflict.
According to a new report from the governor of the region, Maxim Kozitsky, the strikes left 35 dead and 134 injured, after a previous report of nine dead and 57 injured.
“The airstrikes were carried out from the Black and Azov Seas. In total, the invaders fired more than 30 missiles. The Ukrainian air defense system worked. We shot down some of the missiles in the air,” he said.
In this region, strikes had already targeted a military airport in Lutsk on Saturday, killing four Ukrainian soldiers. On Sunday, the mayor of Ivano-Frankivsk, located about 100 kilometers south of Lviv, said that a “strike” had targeted the airport early in the morning.