Russian strikes kill 8 in Ukraine; Poland scrambles jets as Zelensky returns from US

On Thursday, Russian missiles reached across Ukraine from the capital to the western border, killing at least eight people and forcing Poland to scramble fighter jets to defend its airspace. The strikes landed in Kyiv, the Dnipropetrovsk region, Poltava, and Lviv—a span of territory that underscored the reach of Russia's air campaign even as President Volodymyr Zelensky returned from Washington with news that Donald Trump had agreed to provide Ukraine with licenses to manufacture Patriot missiles.

Air raid sirens wailed across most of Ukraine's regions. In Kyiv, witnesses reported hearing explosions; the mayor said several non-residential buildings caught fire, with one person killed and two others wounded. But the heaviest toll came elsewhere. Six people, including two children, died in the Dnipropetrovsk region. Another person was killed in Poltava. The deadliest strike hit Kryvyi Rih, Zelensky's hometown in central Ukraine, where an Iskander-M ballistic missile fired from Russia's Voronezh region struck a family home. Two girls, aged five and twelve, were among the six killed there; eight more were injured. Oleksandr Vilkul, the city's defense council head, called it "a dark night" and warned that the death toll could rise as rescue workers cleared rubble from the wreckage.

In Lviv, near the Polish border, the damage was severe enough to trap people under debris. Russian missiles hit two apartment buildings, injuring twenty-six residents. Rescue teams worked to reach those still trapped in the rubble. The scale of destruction across multiple cities suggested a coordinated campaign rather than scattered strikes.

Zelensky had warned the attack was coming. Hours before the missiles fell, he posted on Telegram that a major Russian assault was likely and that Ukraine's survival depended on whether its allies would supply the air defenses needed to stop them. "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. The timing of his return from the United States—where he had secured Trump's commitment on Patriot licenses—made the contrast sharp: he had just left negotiations for weapons, only to return to a country still absorbing fresh casualties.

Russia's defense ministry claimed it had struck military facilities across Ukraine, from Kyiv to Lviv and the Dnipropetrovsk region, and said its forces had also attacked three cargo ships. Poland, a NATO member sharing a border with Ukraine, responded by launching fighter jets to secure its own airspace. In the Lublin region near the Ukrainian border, Polish police reported a loud explosion in Bilgoraj county and found a crater and scattered debris from an unidentified object in a field—evidence that the strikes' effects were not contained within Ukraine's borders.

The Russian air campaign extended beyond military targets. Ukraine's drone strikes continued to hit Russian infrastructure, particularly the Wildberries online retail platform, which has become a frequent target. On Thursday, a warehouse in Penza caught fire after a Ukrainian drone attack; one person was injured and about two hundred evacuated. Another Wildberries facility in Sarapul, in Russia's Udmurtia region, also caught fire the same day. Recent drone strikes have damaged nearly a dozen Wildberries warehouses, destroying roughly ten percent of the company's storage capacity and inflicting losses on tens of thousands of small businesses that use the platform to sell goods. Russia's largest bank, Sberbank, warned it might need to increase loan-loss provisions as the attacks on Wildberries rippled through the finances of online retailers and their suppliers. The strikes were deepening Russia's fuel crisis even as Ukraine continued to absorb Russian missiles aimed at its cities and civilians.

Russia's defense ministry said it had shot down two hundred fifty-eight drones overnight, a figure that includes Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine. Neither Russia nor Ukraine acknowledges targeting civilians in the war that began with Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, though the pattern of strikes on residential areas and the civilian casualties they produce tell a different story.