Russian drones and missiles took to the Ukrainian skies early Saturday, Ukrainian officials said, in a large-scale airstrike that appeared to target western Ukraine, including regions near the borders with NATO allies.
The Ukrainian Air Force said some missiles were headed toward the western regions of Zakarpattia and Lviv, which border Hungary, Slovakia and Poland, all members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The Polish military said on social media that it had sent fighter jets to protect the southeastern part of its territory in case a missile crossed the border, as has happened in the past.
The wave of attacks, aimed at a part of the country that has so far been less affected by the war, could add urgency to Ukraine’s recent calls for help from its allies to protect its western region.
Shortly after midnight on Saturday, the Ukrainian Air Force reported launches of attack drones followed by waves of missiles. Debris from a downed Russian drone sparked a fire at an infrastructure facility in the western region of Vinnytsia and several explosions were heard in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, local officials said. No casualties were immediately reported.
The extent of damage caused by the attacks was unclear as of 6 a.m. local time. Ukraine’s Energy Minister said energy facilities in five regions had been attacked. In recent months, Russia has hit the country’s energy infrastructure, in what appears to be a campaign aimed at cutting off electricity and making life miserable for civilians.
Ukrainian officials maintain that if allies used their own aircraft and air defense systems to shoot down Russian missiles approaching their own borders, it would ease the burden on Ukraine, which faces shortages of ammunition and air defense weapons.
“Technically, all of this is possible. Shoot down Russian missiles that are already on Ukrainian territory, from their planes,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with The New York Times last week, noting that Ukraine’s western neighbors were already deploying planes to protect their airspace during such attacks.
That kind of direct NATO involvement, which analysts say could provoke Russia to retaliate, has been resisted by governments in the United States and Europe. Now that Washington and other allies have agreed to partially lift the ban on Ukraine’s use of Western weapons to attack inside Russia, Ukrainian officials could try to press their case further.
On Friday, Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Zelensky, said in a post on the Telegram messaging app that if Ukraine’s Western neighbors shot down Russian missiles from their territory, it would “allow Ukraine to concentrate its scarce anti-missile systems on the territory.” east and south of the country”, which are attacked almost daily.