Russian strikes kill 13 in Ukraine; Poland scrambles jets as Zelenskiy secures US missile support

On Thursday, Russian air strikes killed at least thirteen people across Ukraine, with attacks reaching far enough west to trigger a military response from neighboring Poland. The strikes scattered across multiple cities—Kyiv, Lviv, Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, and Kryvyi Rih—forcing Polish armed forces to scramble fighter jets and activate ground-based air defense systems as a precautionary measure. Air raid alerts sounded across most Ukrainian regions. In the capital, explosions were heard and fires broke out at non-residential sites, according to Kyiv's mayor Vitali Klitschko. One person died and two were injured in Kyiv itself.

The toll was heaviest in the eastern and central regions. Six people were killed in Dnipropetrovsk and Poltava combined. In Kryvyi Rih, President Zelenskiy's hometown, a Russian Iskander-M ballistic missile struck a family home directly, killing six people including two girls aged five and twelve. Eight others were injured in that strike. Oleksandr Vilkul, the city's defense council head, said the missile had been launched from Russia's Voronezh region and warned that the death count could rise as rescue workers continued clearing rubble. In Lviv, near the Polish border, rescue teams worked to reach people trapped under debris from two damaged apartment buildings; fifteen were injured there.

The timing of the strikes coincided with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's return from the United States, where he had secured approval from President Donald Trump for Ukraine to receive licenses to use Patriot missiles. Zelenskiy had warned beforehand that a major Russian attack was imminent and emphasized that protecting Ukrainian lives depended on allies' commitment to providing air defense systems. "It is important that our partners fully understand what is happening and that the protection of people's lives depends directly on their willingness," he wrote on Telegram before the strikes occurred.

While the air campaign unfolded, Ukraine's own drone operations continued targeting Russian infrastructure. A Ukrainian drone attack struck a Wildberries warehouse in Penza, a western Russian city, setting it ablaze. One person was injured and approximately two hundred were evacuated from the facility. This marked the latest in a series of attacks on Wildberries, Russia's largest online retailer, which has become a frequent target. The company confirmed it had evacuated another facility in central Russia just the day before. Recent drone strikes have damaged nearly a dozen Wildberries warehouses, destroying roughly ten percent of the company's total storage capacity.

The damage to Wildberries extends beyond the company itself. Tens of thousands of small businesses use the platform as their primary sales channel, and the warehouse losses have begun rippling through Russia's economy. Some ordinary Russians depend on online sales through Wildberries as their main source of income. The company announced it was redirecting its supply chains in response to the Penza attack. Russia's largest bank, Sberbank, warned it may need to increase loan-loss provisions as the financial strain on online retailers and their suppliers mounts. These drone strikes compound the broader economic pressure from Ukraine's ongoing attacks on Russian energy facilities and refineries, which have deepened fuel shortages across the country.

Russia's defense ministry reported that its forces downed two hundred fifty-eight drones overnight, a figure that includes Russian-occupied portions of Ukraine. Neither Russia nor Ukraine acknowledges targeting civilians in the conflict, which began with Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022. Reuters could not independently verify all the reports from Thursday's strikes. The pattern, however, is clear: as Ukraine gains new weapons capabilities and continues its drone campaign against Russian economic targets, the human and financial costs of the war continue to mount on both sides.