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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian ballistic missile and drone barrage across Ukraine overnight into Thursday killed at least eight civilians, including children, and wounded more than 50 others, officials said.
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The blitz expanded Russia’s almost daily bombardment of Ukrainian cities as Moscow apparently looked to exploit Kyiv’s critical shortage of Western-supplied anti-ballistic missile defenses.
NATO member Poland, meanwhile, was looking into Ukrainian reports that a Russian cruise missile entered its airspace during the onslaught in an incident that could deepen tensions between the Western military alliance and Moscow. European countries, mistrustful of the Kremlin’s wider ambitions, fear that the war in Ukraine could spill into their territory.
The barrage spanned regions across Ukraine, including areas by the border with Poland that are far from the front line in the east of the country and where Ukraine is believed to store and manufacture weapons for its fight against Russia’s more than 4-year-old invasion. Its long-range drones and missiles have battered Russia’s oil sector, causing a fuel crisis.
The attack came two days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met in Washington with U.S. President Donald Trump and representatives of American defense companies, as he pleads for swifter and bigger deliveries of Patriot air defense systems that are the best way to stop Russia’s ballistic assaults.
The Iran war has drained stockpiles of the American-made interceptors. Trump has promised to grant Ukraine licenses to build its own Patriots, but production could take a long time to set up.
“Given the critical shortage of air defense missiles from our partners, our warriors are accomplishing truly incredible things, demonstrating a very high level of professionalism,” Zelenskyy said on social media.
“This Russian terror once again proves that protection against the Russian missile threat is the most important task when it comes to saving the lives of our people,” he said.
Russia says its attack targeted military sites
Zelenskyy said at least 10 Ukrainian regions were attacked, with dozens of homes, businesses and infrastructure facilities destroyed or damaged.
Russia launched more than 70 missiles, a significant number of them ballistic, he said, along with more than 280 attack drones, of which more than 260 were intercepted.
The Russian Defense Ministry said it aimed at Ukrainian air bases, arms factories and military telecommunications and logistics facilities.
The targets included drone production factories and storage depots, a missile plant, an aircraft repair plant, a factory making electronic components, and a chemical plant, it said.
In the Dnipropetrovsk region, the Russian attack killed six people and wounded 10, Oleksandr Hanzha, head of the regional military administration, said.
Children were among the dead, he said on Telegram — a 6-year-old girl and boys aged 11 and 17 in the area of Kryvyi Rih, Zelenskyy’s hometown.
The children’s parents were killed in the same attack, but two more children were pulled alive from under the rubble, Zelenskyy said.
“It was an ordinary home, blown (to) smithereens by a ballistic missile … ” he said on X.
In Kyiv, Russian forces struck the capital with ballistic missiles, killing a 31-year-old man and wounding two others, the National Police press service said.
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A cruise missile attack struck the western city of Lviv, wounding 34 people, including three children age 6, 13 and 15, according to Maksym Kozytskyi, head of the Lviv regional military administration. Emergency crews were still searching through rubble.
In the Poltava region, a drone hit company warehouses, killing one person, regional military head Vitalii Diakivnych said.
Russian forces also dropped three powerful glide bombs on an industrial zone in the southern city of Kherson on Thursday morning, killing a 56-year-old man, local officials said.
Poland looks into whether a Russian cruise missile crossed its border
A Russian Kh-101 cruise missile crossed into Poland overnight, violating NATO airspace, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on X.
Sybiha called it a clear demonstration that strengthening Ukraine’s air defense is urgent and serves as a guarantee of wider European protection.
Polish authorities did not immediately confirm Sybiha’s comments.
An unidentified object flying westward in the middle of the night was tracked in Polish airspace and an F-16 fighter jet was launched to identify and intercept it, the Operational Command of the Polish Armed Forces said on X.
The object disappeared from radar screens before it could be identified, the command said. A helicopter flew to its last known location, where the crew discovered a probable impact site in a farming area in the Lublin province, the command wrote.
Zelenskyy met with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Lublin on Wednesday to discuss defense issues.
Polish authorities have not confirmed what, if anything, crashed. Tusk traveled to the area Thursday morning to inspect the site.
Ukraine hits more depots of major Russian online retailer
Meanwhile, Russia’s Defense Ministry said that air defenses downed 258 Ukrainian drones overnight.
A depot belonging to Wildberries online retailer was set ablaze in Russia’s Penza region southeast of Moscow, in the latest strike on the company’s warehouses, Penza Gov. Oleg Melnichenko.
One person was injured and 200 workers were evacuated, he said.
Wildberries also reported that its warehouse in Sarapul in the region of Udmurtia, more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) from Ukraine, was struck by a Ukrainian drone and set ablaze. It said the workers had been safely evacuated.
The Russian online news outlet Astra reported that another Wildberries depot in the Perm region in the Urals was also set ablaze by a Ukrainian drone strike. Regional authorities reported a Ukrainian drone attack but didn’t give information about the damage.
Ukraine accuses Wildberries of supplying goods that can be used by the Russian military.
Ukrainian drone units destroyed four more vessels belonging to Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” of sanctions-busting tankers, bringing the total to 205 since the operation began July 6, Robert “Madyar” Brovdi, commander of the Unmanned Systems Forces, said on his Telegram channel.
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AP reporter Stefanie Dazio in Berlin contributed to this story.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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