Yuri, right, a bus driver, and his son Ruslan, a doctor, stand in front of a bus damaged by air strikes at a nearby military complex, while they wait outside Novoiavorivsk District Hospital on March 13.Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Russian missiles slammed into a military base near the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on Sunday, killing at least 35 people in a part of the country that had been considered a safe haven next to the Polish border, far from Moscow’s attacks elsewhere.
There were also 134 injuries, according to local authorities. The base, known as the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security, had previously been used by Canadian troops conducting training in Ukraine, and had more recently been used as a training site for foreign fighters that have come into the country since the start of the Russian invasion.
Hours after the attack, dozens of ambulances were still moving along the road to Lviv.
The base is situated less than 20 kilometres from Ukraine’s border with Poland, a NATO state. Russian aircraft fired roughly 30 missiles, local authorities said. They reiterated calls for more Western military support, including the enforcement of a no-fly zone.
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“Now that the shelling is approaching the borders of NATO countries, this is the crucial moment!” regional governor Maksym Kozytsky said in a statement.
Ukraine’s demands for a no-fly zone have been rejected by Canada and its allies, as they seek to avoid direct conflict between NATO countries and the Russian military.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine said no foreign volunteers were killed in the base bombardment.
But in a separate attack Sunday, a U.S. citizen died in Irpin, a satellite city of Kyiv. Local police identified the deceased as journalist Brent Renaud. Time magazine said in a statement that Mr. Renaud was in the country on assignment for Time Studios.
The air strike on the base near Lviv was carried out by aircraft that took off from Russia’s Saratov airport and approached from the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, according to Colonel Anton Myronovych, a spokesperson for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Though air defences sounded a warning before the strike and shot down some of the incoming barrage, images posted to social media showed considerable damage to the base, including a building on fire.
The base has been vital to the flow of foreign fighters and supplies into Ukraine. Hundreds of Canadians have come to the country to join its fight against Russia, as part of a group of more than 20,000 overseas volunteers who now make up Ukraine’s developing International Legion.
Russia had warned on Saturday it would consider foreign munitions sent to Ukraine to be “legitimate targets” for attack.
Col. Myronovych had earlier told The New York Times the base was being used to train “up to a thousand foreigners.” On Sunday, he suggested Ukraine intended to continue welcoming foreign fighters to its International Legion.
“Volunteers are coming,” he told The Globe. “There are a lot of foreigners who want to defend Ukraine. They’re coming, they’re getting ready.”
From 2015 until shortly before the start of the war, the base served as the headquarters for Operation Unifier, a Canadian training mission to Ukraine. Canadian personnel provided training to 33,346 Ukrainian troops.
Russia “understands and wants to prevent Western interference,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said in an interview.
The base had “foreign infrastructure and even, most likely, foreign military personnel,” he said. “They were attacked to show that nothing will stop [Russia].”
He called on Western countries to do more to arm Ukraine, noting that the country’s defences were able to shoot down part of the attack Sunday. “If the West had given us better air defences, they would have shot down more,” he said.
The attack on the base “is an attack on foreigners,” Ministry of Defence spokesperson Markian Lubkivskyi said. “Nobody can be safe because of this,” he added in reference to the base’s proximity to Poland.
For those living nearby, the attack shattered a feeling of security that had pervaded the far western stretches of Ukraine. In the predawn darkness Sunday, bells at a church near the base began to sound an alert.
Stephan Bahlai was on duty at a checkpoint in Staryi Yar when he saw streaks of light pierce the dark sky, followed by explosions that shook the earth.
The attack lasted about 20 minutes. “First there were several explosions, then a short break. Then again. It happened three times,” said Ivan Bahlai, Stephan’s brother. One of their neighbours, Maria Zinko, was in her kitchen making a raspberry pie for her husband’s 60th birthday when the attack began to shake the walls and windows of her house. She hustled her family, including three granddaughters, into her basement. The seven of them huddled for two hours, afraid to come back out in case the attack resumed.
“We are in a border zone, near Poland. We hoped there would be no shooting here,” Ms. Zinko said. Within hours, other nearby families had begun to leave the country. Ms. Zinko said she now wants her grandchildren, two of them toddlers, to find somewhere safer, too.
“They are small, I can’t watch how afraid they are,” she said. “They were trembling so much I could not calm them down.”
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