Poland said early Wednesday that a Russian-made missile fell within the eastern a part of the country, killing two people in a blast that marked the primary time within the war with Ukraine that Russian weapons got here down on a NATO country.
Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy decried the strike as “a really significant escalation” of the war.
The Polish government said in a press release that Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau summoned the Russian ambassador and “demanded immediate detailed explanations.”
Polish government spokesman Piotr Mueller said some military units were placed on alert while officials sought details.
Polish media reported that the strike took place in an area where grain was drying in Przewodów, a village near the border with Ukraine.
The Russian Defense Ministry denied being behind “any strikes on targets near the Ukrainian-Polish border” and said in a press release that photos of purported damage “don’t have anything to do” with Russian weapons.
On Tuesday, Russia pounded Ukraine’s energy facilities with its biggest barrage of missiles yet, striking targets across the country and causing widespread blackouts.
The barrage also affected neighboring Moldova. It reported massive power outages after the strikes knocked out a key power line that supplies the small nation, an official said.
The missile strikes plunged much of Ukraine into darkness and drew defiance from Zelenskyy, who shook his fist and declared: “We’ll survive every part.”
In his nightly address, the Ukrainian leader said the reported strikes in Poland offered proof that “terror will not be limited by our state borders.”
“We want to place the terrorist as an alternative. The longer Russia feels impunity, the more threats there shall be for everybody throughout the reach of Russian missiles,” Zelenskyy said.
Russia fired at the least 85 missiles, most of them geared toward the country’s power facilities, and blacked out many cities, he said.
The Ukrainian energy minister said the attack was “essentially the most massive” bombardment of power facilities within the nearly 9-month-old Russian invasion, striking each power generation and transmission systems.
Service members of pro-Russian troops on an infantry fighting vehicle within the town of Popasna within the Luhansk Region, Ukraine, on June 2, 2022.
Alexander Ermochenko | Reuters
The minister, Herman Haluschenko, described the missile strikes as “one other attempt at terrorist revenge” after military and diplomatic setbacks for the Kremlin. He accused Russia of “attempting to cause maximum damage to our energy system on the eve of winter.”
The aerial assault, which resulted in at the least one death in a residential constructing within the capital, Kyiv, followed days of euphoria in Ukraine sparked by certainly one of its biggest military successes — the retaking last week of the southern city of Kherson.
The facility grid was already battered by previous attacks that destroyed an estimated 40% of the country’s energy infrastructure. Zelenskyy said the variety of Ukrainians without power had fallen from 10 million to 2 million by Tuesday evening.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has not commented on the retreat from Kherson since his troops pulled out within the face of a Ukrainian offensive. However the stunning scale of Tuesday’s strikes spoke volumes and hinted at anger within the Kremlin.
By striking targets within the late afternoon, not long before dusk began to fall, the Russian military forced rescue staff to labor in the dead of night and gave repair crews scant time to evaluate the damage by daylight.
Greater than a dozen regions — amongst them Lviv within the west, Kharkiv within the northeast and others in between — reported strikes or efforts by their air defenses to shoot missiles down. Not less than a dozen regions reported power outages, affecting cities that together have hundreds of thousands of individuals. Almost half of the Kyiv region lost power, authorities said.
Zelenskyy warned that more strikes were possible and urged people to remain secure and seek shelter.
“Many of the hits were recorded in the middle and within the north of the country. Within the capital, the situation could be very difficult,” said a senior official, Kyrylo Tymoshenko.
He said a complete of 15 energy targets were damaged and claimed that 70 missiles were shot down. A Ukrainian Air Force spokesman said Russia used X-101 and X-555 cruise missiles.
As city after city reported attacks, Tymoshenko urged Ukrainians to “hang in there.”
With its battlefield losses mounting, Russia has increasingly resorted to targeting Ukraine’s power grid, seemingly hoping to show the approach of winter right into a weapon by leaving people within the cold and dark.
In Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said authorities found a body in certainly one of three residential buildings that were struck within the capital, where emergency blackouts were also announced by power provider DTEK.
Video published by a presidential aide showed a five-story, apparently residential constructing in Kyiv on fire, with flames licking through apartments. Klitschko said air defense units also shot down some missiles.
Head of the Office of National Security, Jacek Siewiersk (L), and Spokesperson of the Polish government, Piotr Muller, make a press release after a crisis meeting of the Office of National Security, in Warsaw, on November 15, 2022.
Janek Skarzynski | AFP | Getty Images
Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra took to a bomb shelter in Kyiv after meeting his Ukrainian counterpart and, from his place of safety, described the bombardment as “an infinite motivation to maintain standing shoulder-to-shoulder” with Ukraine.
“There could be just one answer, and that’s: Keep going. Keep supporting Ukraine, keep delivering weapons, keep working on accountability, keep working on humanitarian aid,” he said.
The strikes got here as authorities were already working furiously to get Kherson back on its feet and starting to research alleged Russian abuses there and in the encompassing area.
The southern city is without power and water, and the pinnacle of the U.N. human rights office’s monitoring mission in Ukraine, Matilda Bogner, on Tuesday decried a “dire humanitarian situation” there.
Speaking from Kyiv, Bogner said her teams need to travel to Kherson to attempt to confirm allegations of nearly 80 cases of forced disappearances and arbitrary detention.
The pinnacle of the National Police of Ukraine, Igor Klymenko, said authorities are to begin investigating reports from Kherson residents that Russian forces arrange at the least three alleged torture sites in now-liberated parts of the broader Kherson region.
The retaking of Kherson dealt one other stinging blow to the Kremlin. Zelenskyy likened the recapture to the Allied landings in France on D-Day in World War II, saying each were watershed events on the road to eventual victory.
But large parts of eastern and southern Ukraine remain under Russian control, and fighting continues.
Zelenskyy warned of possible more grim news ahead.
“All over the place, after we liberate our land, we see one thing — Russia leaves behind torture chambers and mass burials. … What number of mass graves are there within the territory that also stays under the control of Russia?” Zelenskyy asked.
