Two Russian missiles struck a Polish village close to the Ukrainian border on Tuesday, killing two people, a US official has said.
Polish media reported that two people died on Tuesday afternoon after a projectile struck an area where grain was drying in the village of Przewodów, causing an explosion.
Polish government spokesman Piotr Mueller did not immediately confirm the claim by a senior US intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the situation. But Mueller said top leaders were holding an emergency meeting due to a “crisis situation”.
Neighbouring Moldova was also affected. It reported massive power outages after the strikes knocked out a key power line that supplies the small nation, an official said.
A defiant Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shook his fist and declared: “We will survive everything.”
Zelensky dubbed the fresh barrage of Russian strikes targeting his country’s power grid a “slap in the face of G20”.
“This act of genocide of Ukrainians in response to my peace plan is a cynical slap in the face of G20 and the world,” Zelensky wrote on social media.
Zelensky said Russia fired at least 85 missiles, “most of them at our energy infrastructure,” and shut down power in many cities.
The aerial assault followed days of euphoria in Ukraine sparked by one of its biggest military successes – the retaking last week of the southern city of Kherson.
The power grid was already battered by previous attacks that destroyed an estimated 40 per cent of the country’s energy infrastructure.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has not commented on the retreat from Kherson since his troops pulled out in the face of a Ukrainian offensive. But the stunning scale of Tuesday’s strikes spoke volumes and hinted at anger in the Kremlin.
By striking targets in the late afternoon, not long before dusk began to fall, the Russian military forced rescuers to labour in the dark and gave repair crews scant time to assess the damage by daylight.More than a dozen regions – among them Lviv in the west, Kharkiv in the northeast and others in between – reported strikes or efforts by their air defences to shoot missiles down. At least a dozen regions reported power outages, affecting cities that together have millions of people. Almost half of the Kyiv region lost power, authorities said. Ukrainian Railways announced nationwide train delays.
Zelensky warned that more strikes were possible and urged people to stay safe and seek shelter.
“Most of the hits were recorded in the centre and in the north of the country. In the capital, the situation is very difficult,” said a senior official, Kyrylo Tymoshenko.
He said a total 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.