The Army, the presidential office and the Government of Ukraine once again asked kyiv’s Western allies on Thursday to urgently send in F-16 fighter jets to protect civilians from attacks like the one that claimed the lives of four civilians last night in the city of Lviv.
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“Unfortunately, it is not easy to protect the whole country from missile attacks like this,” spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, Ukrainian Air Force, said in an intervention on Ukrainian radio. Yuri Ignatwhich added that this component of the Army could have prevented the massacre if it had had F-16 aircraft.
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The Ukrainian Defense Ministry spoke along the same lines, in a message posted on its Twitter account.
As explained by the Ukrainian Air Force, the attack on Lviv was perpetrated with a total of ten Kalibr cruise missiles launched from Russian submarines and aircraft carriers located in the Black Sea.
The missiles were aimed at kyiv, in northern Ukraine, until they suddenly changed their trajectory to fool Ukrainian air defenses and headed west, where Lviv is located.
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Ukrainian defenses managed to shoot down seven of the 10 missiles, but were unable to prevent some of the shells from hitting a housing block and other civilian infrastructure in and around Lviv, according to the Ukrainian Army.
“To intercept ten missiles out of ten we need F-16s”said the Air Force spokesman.
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How was the attack?
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed to have attacked Ukrainian military temporary bases and foreign armored warehouses with naval missiles, in which it became “the most destructive attack” since the beginning of the Russian invasion, the mayor of Lviv, Andrí Sadovi, said on Thursday.
“Sixty apartments have been seriously affected. There is damage to educational institutions, residences of the Lviv Polytechnic, a large office building nearby. 57 vehicles have been destroyed,” the mayor told a press conference.
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In total about a thousand residents may need temporary housing. Those affected are being transferred to hotels and temporary residence housing previously used for internally displaced Ukrainians.
The area is close to the city center, a Unesco heritage site. As in many other parts of Lviv the buildings are not far from military barracks.
The building of one of the military training establishments, the Hetman Petro Sahaidachny National Military Academy, is a few hundred meters away, although there is no information on damage to the facility.
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“The Russian Armed Forces carried out a concentrated attack with high-precision weapons and long-range naval emplacement against temporary bases of personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and foreign mercenaries and warehouses of armored equipment of foreign production,” the spokesman said. of Defense, Igor Konashenkov.
According to the representative of the Russian military command, all the targets of the attack were hit by the Russian missiles and destroyed. “Considerable damage was inflicted on the enemy’s strategic reserves,” he added.
According to reports from the Ukrainian authorities, another 37 people were injured in the attack, 13 of whom were hospitalized. A total of 35 buildings were damaged, two of them “critically”.
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Although some of the explosions sounded like air defenses it seemed to be passing my house. Alarms were activated in all vehicles. My arms are shaking.
“It was very scary. Although some of the explosions sounded like air defenses, it seemed that it was passing next to my house. The alarms were activated in all the vehicles. My arms are shaking,” Alisa, a resident, told the Efe news agency. Another citizen, Dmytro, said that a co-worker and his daughter were killed in the attack.
A video with Images taken after the attack were shared on Twitter by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.who promised a “strong” response to the Russian attack.
The missile attack against Lviv, located about a thousand kilometers away from the front, is the most recent of those launched against cities that are relatively less protected than those closest to the combat zones.
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On Tuesday 43 people were injured in an attack on Pervomaiske in Kharkiv and three people were killed in Monday’s Shahed drone strike in Sumy.
Lviv. Consequences of the night attack by Russian terrorists. Unfortunately, there are wounded and dead. My condolences to the relatives!
There will definitely be a response to the enemy. A strong one. pic.twitter.com/9yl1MT6Eu4
— Volodimir Zelensky (@ZelenskyyUa) July 6, 2023
Military aid to kyiv
Amid the multiple reactions to this attack, the adviser to the Ukrainian presidential office Mikhailo Podoliak wondered on his Twitter account if saving the lives of the Ukrainians who die in attacks like the one last night is not a sufficient reason “to send on time” the weapons and “the fighters” that Ukraine requests.
“Or does it not matter because the missiles do not fly beyond Kiev, Odessa and Lviv?”, alluding to the fact that Russia only attacks Ukrainian territory and not NATO and European Union countries.
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Ukraine, in effect, is attacked almost every night with kamikaze drones and Russian missiles. The Ukrainian Army shoots down practically all the projectiles that are directed against the capital, where it has concentrated the bulk of the modern anti-aircraft systems sent by its Western allies.
But Ukraine has not received a sufficient number of anti-aircraft systems to reliably defend all the cities in its vast territory.
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Zelensky this weekend expressed his frustration at the delays of most of his allies when setting a date to train pilots from his country in the use of F-16 aircraft. kyiv sees a commitment from several countries to train their pilots as a first step towards sending these Western fighters to Ukraine.
Precisely, the Ukrainian president arrived this Thursday in Bulgaria, an ammunition-producing country, for a one-day official visit to talk about joining NATO and the delivery of weapons.
This visit aims speed up deliveries of small arms and ammunition, crucial for the ongoing Ukrainian counter-offensive.
Zelensky said on Telegram that he will hold “in-depth talks” with Bulgarian Prime Minister Nikolai Denkov, as well as with President Rumen Radev, various members of the government and parliamentarians.
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The meetings will address defense issues and Ukraine’s integration into NATO, he added.
Russia reacted to the hearing by assuring that it is a sign of kyiv’s desire to involve “more countries” in the conflict in Ukraine.
“The Kiev regime is doing everything possible to drag (…) more countries into this conflict. Many have already fallen into this conflict, directly or indirectly,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Bulgarian journalists, that it is about to approve the sending of military aid directly to Ukraine, which until now was done through third countries.
This country, a member of the European Union and NATO, is historically and culturally close to Russia, so the shipment of arms to Ukraine has sparked debate.
WILLIAM MORENO HERNANDEZ
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from EFE and AFP
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