3 killed in air strikes on western Ukraine

Russian missiles killed three people in the Ukrainian city of Lutsk early on Tuesday, the latest deadly strike on the west of the country, which has seen an uptick in aerial attacks.
The barrage of nearly three dozen missiles also tore through a playground in Lviv, western Ukraine’s largest city, sparking a blaze that left a five-storey residential building charred and its windows blown out.
The attack came as Russia’s defence minister said during a military conference in Moscow that Ukraine was running low on military resources, with Kyiv seeing slow battlefield progress.
His ministry said the missile strikes targeted “key” facilities of Ukraine’s military-industrial complex, which “suffered significant damage”.
“All targets were hit”, it added, though Ukraine said it downed 16 of 28 missiles fired both from Russian territory and warships in the Black Sea.
One of the missiles hit a factory in Lutsk of the Swedish ball bearing maker SKF, killing three of its employees.
An SKF spokesman told AFP the factory produced bearings for heavy commercial vehicles, saying it was an “ordinary civilian activity”.
Lutsk had a prewar population of over 200,000 and is less than 100km from Ukraine’s border with Poland.
Deadly Russian strikes in western Ukraine had been sporadic: In March last year, four Ukrainian soldiers were killed and six wounded in Russian strikes on the Lutsk military airport.
But they have increased in recent weeks, and AFP journalists in the western region of Ivano-Frankivsk this week witnessed family members bury an eight-year-old boy killed by Russian cruise missiles targeting a western airbase.
Several missiles were downed over Lviv, where 19 people were wounded, regional governor Maksym Kozytskyi said.
“I feel terrible pain,” Olga Bura, a 64-year-old retired economist in the city, told AFP.
Her voice cracked with emotion as she surveyed the extensive damage to her home, broken glass crackling underfoot.
“The world simply does not realise the danger that comes from Russia, from Putin himself,” Bura said.
The powerful explosion left cars in the street outside Bura’s home coated with debris and mud.
Firefighters and policemen cordoned off a four-storey building nearby whose top floors caught fire, forcing evacuated residents to remain outside.
Charity workers, who pitched a tent outside the building, distributed sandwiches, biscuits and coffee to the stranded residents.
More than 100 apartments were damaged, a kindergarten was “destroyed” after a missile flew into its yard, and a supermarket ceiling collapsed, according to local authorities.