A Russian drone and missile attack early Wednesday claimed the lives of seven people, including four members of the same family, in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, according to local officials.
Lviv’s mayor, Andriy Sadovyi, reported that Yaroslav Bazylevych lost his wife and three daughters when their home was hit in the attack. “In the heart of Europe, Russia is wiping out entire Ukrainian families, killing our children and our future,” Sadovyi stated on social media.
The mayor revealed that Bazylevych’s daughters were aged seven, 18, and 21. Earlier, he had mentioned that three children were among the victims of the attack.
Videos from the scene showed emergency responders retrieving bodies from the rubble of a damaged residential building, while a distressed woman searched for information about her daughter and granddaughters. A video shared by Ukraine’s state emergency service depicted rescuers recovering what appeared to be the body of a girl from the debris.
Emergency services reported that 53 people, including seven children, were injured in the Lviv attack.
Russia, which has been waging a full-scale invasion of Ukraine for over 30 months, denies targeting civilians and insists that Ukrainian military, energy, and transport infrastructure are legitimate military targets. However, thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed during the conflict.
Ukrainian officials stated that Russian attacks over the past 24 hours struck energy facilities and other critical infrastructure in nine Ukrainian regions.
Wednesday’s strikes, which also damaged historic buildings in central Lviv, followed the deadliest single attack of the year on Tuesday when Russia struck a military institute in the central city of Poltava with two ballistic missiles, killing 50 people and injuring hundreds more.
Russia’s Defence Ministry announced on Wednesday that the “precision strike” in Poltava targeted a Ukrainian armed forces’ center where foreign instructors trained personnel in communications, electronic warfare, and drone operations.
In Lviv, the ministry claimed that hypersonic Kinzhal missiles and drones were used to strike defense enterprises responsible for manufacturing and repairing electronic components for aircraft and missile systems used by the Ukrainian military.
According to Ukraine’s air force, Russia launched two Kh-47 M2 Kinzhal missiles as part of an overnight attack involving 13 missiles. Ukrainian air defenses managed to shoot down seven of these missiles, along with 22 of the 29 drones launched across the country during the attack.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged allies to help stop the “terror” by providing more air defense systems and called for permission to use long-range Western weapons deeper into Russian territory. In response, Moscow warned on Wednesday that it would deliver an “extremely painful” retaliation if Ukraine were to carry out long-range strikes on Russian soil.
Lviv’s mayor, Andriy Sadovyi, reported on national television that over 156 structures, including schools, homes, and clinics, were damaged in the attack. The region’s governor, Maksym Kozytskyi, added that at least seven local architectural monuments were affected, all located within the city’s historic area and UNESCO buffer zone, which protects World Heritage sites.
In another attack on Wednesday, Russia targeted the central city of Kryvyi Rih, injuring five people, including a 10-year-old child, and damaging several buildings, according to Dnipropetrovsk regional governor Serhiy Lysak.
Russia has intensified its bombardment of Ukraine over the past 10 days, launching hundreds of missiles and drones. Some Russian military bloggers describe this escalation as Moscow’s response to a recent Ukrainian incursion into Russian territory.
Meanwhile, Poland scrambled aircraft on Wednesday for the third time in eight days to secure its airspace, as Lviv is located just 70 kilometers from the Polish border.
