The tragic death of two people on the Polish border caused by a stray missile – likely fired by Ukraine at an incoming Russian projectile – must not be allowed to overshadow one of the biggest blitzes on the war-torn country in the nearly nine-month conflict.
In one afternoon, about 90 cruise missiles and 10 Iranian-made drones rained down over Ukraine in the biggest attack by Russia in months. Power grids all over the country were targeted, sending large areas, including the capital, Kyiv, into darkness.
US President Joe Biden and leaders of G7 and NATO nations met while in Bali for G20 to discuss the missile hitting Poland.Credit:AP
Ukrainians, again, spent hours huddled in bunkers waiting for the missile shower to end. At least one person died and six were wounded.
It now appears likely that, in an attempt to shoot down one of the missiles coming down over western Ukraine, its air-defence system fired a missile that then went over the border and into the Polish village of Przewodow.
More than 20 of the missiles were destined for Kyiv, with Ukraine’s air defence system able to intercept 18 of them. At least three missiles hit, destroying an apartment building in the centre of the city.
The missile strike started just as we reached the outskirts of the capital after a 10-hour drive from the country’s east. We spent a few hours bunkered down on the side of the road and then at a service station, before tentatively making our way into the city of 3 million people which had been plunged into darkness.
It’s a reminder, on my way out the country, of what Ukrainians must continue to endure. After spending almost three weeks in the south and east of the country witnessing the daily carnage brought about by the war on and near the front line, another missile attack shouldn’t shock me.
But there is something about Tuesday’s afternoon’s strike that seems particularly egregious. After Russian President Vladimir Putin suffered a series of major setbacks on the battlefield, his military clearly wants to target civilian infrastructure to continue making life as difficult as possible.
While Ukrainians have normalised this, the rest of us should not.
While I will soon have the luxury of returning to a sense of normalcy, Ukrainians are now tolerating conditions that should be intolerable.
This was the destruction of civil infrastructure on a mass scale. Power stations and associated infrastructure were targeted all over Ukraine, including in the Kyiv, Rivne, Zhytomyr, Lviv, Khmelnytskyi, Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, Vinnytsia, Odesa, Kirovohrad, Cherkasy, Volyn, and Kharkiv regions.
It is too early say what the long-term ramifications will be of the war in Ukraine spilling over the border into a NATO country.
But with Russia targeting infrastructure in western Ukraine throughout its nine-month invasion, this was always a risk.
And with 100 deadly weapons raining down on the country, it had to defend itself.
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