Eight people, including two boys and a girl, have died during a Russian missile and drone attack on Ukraine, according to local officials.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had launched more than 70 missiles and over 280 drones at the country overnight. The worst attack was near Zelensky’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih.
Dozens of “ordinary homes, civilian businesses and infrastructure facilities” were destroyed or damaged in the attack, he added.
The attack comes after Zelensky met US President Donald Trump in Washington DC this week to urge the US to grant Ukraine a licence to produce Patriot interceptor missiles, which he says are crucial to the country’s defence.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said an object that crashed into a field in eastern Poland in the early hours of Thursday was probably a Russian missile.
Ukraine’s acting Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha had earlier said a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile had “crossed into Poland as part of Russia’s massive strike against Ukraine, violating Nato airspace”.
A six-year-old girl and two boys, aged 11 and 17, were among six killed when a Russian ballistic missile hit the Ukrainian village of Radushne, a few kilometres from Kryvyi Rih, local defence council chief Oleksandr Vilkul said.
The missile had hit a home where a large family lived, according to Vilkul, and Zelensky said the house had been “blown into smithereens”.
Two private homes were completely destroyed, the defence council chief said. Another eight people were wounded in the attack, including an 84-year-old woman who was taken to hospital, and two children who were pulled from the rubble alive, officials added.
Ukraine had been expecting a Russian offensive, with Zelensky warning just hours before the strikes that Moscow was preparing for a “massive attack”.
In Kyiv, one person died and fires broke out in three non-residential buildings overnight, the capital’s mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on Telegram.
The mayor of Poltava also reported a death, which came after he said a Nova Poshta postal terminal had been attacked.
There were also explosions in Lviv and mayor Andriy Sadovyi said residential buildings had been damaged.
Multiple people were injured with some trapped under a building, he added, saying residents were helping rescuers to clear the rubble.
In neighbouring Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk was heading to the site of a 10m-crater (33ft), after “a violation of Polish airspace occurred” during Russia’s attack on Lviv.
Polish armed forces said they had mobilised on-duty fighter jets during the strikes, after detecting at least a dozen missiles over western Ukraine that could have posed a threat to Polish airspace.
The closest one was observed about 5km from the Polish border at 03:29, after which it changed direction and headed eastwards.
The military said they had subsequently located the crater with scattered debris on Polish soil – in a field about 2km away from the village of Tarnawa-Kolonia, Lublin province, in the south. The site has been secured, they said.
Police said they had received a report of a powerful explosion in the area.
Poland’s prime minister said the crater was likely caused by a Russian missile, but investigations were still ongoing.
“All the indications are that it was a Russian Kh-101 ballistic missile, but we want to be 100% certain about the type of missile and who launched it,” Donald Tusk said at a specially convened meeting in Lublin.
Meanwhile in Russia, a regional official reported an overnight attack on the warehouse of a retailer in the city of Penza.
One person was injured at a Wildberries facility, Regional Governor Oleg Melnichenko posted on Telegram.
Wildberries is often described as “Russia’s Amazon” and its sites have been the target of recent Ukrainian attacks.
The military action follows repeated calls by Ukraine’s president to bolster Kyiv’s anti-ballistic missile defences.
“The protection of people’s lives depends directly on their willingness, or lack of willingness, to provide air defence missiles,” he wrote on X on Wednesday.
The Patriot is one of the few air defence systems able to intercept ballistic missiles, which Russia has increasingly used to bombard Ukrainian cities.
