Nato fighter jets were scrambled to protect Polish airspace as Russia launched a barrage of drones and missiles at neighbouring Ukraine, including in its less bombarded western region.
“Due to the intensive air attack by the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine, Polish and [Nato] allied aircraft began to operate in Polish airspace in the morning,” the Polish armed forces said.
Poland, a Nato member since 1999, did not provide details about what other allied states were involved in the operation. Russian missiles have briefly breached Polish airspace on at least two occasions since the start of the war.
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The incident came as Russia and Ukraine traded strikes on military airfields amid fading hopes of a peace deal after President Trump suggested Washington was prepared to let the two countries “fight for a while”.
Ukraine said Russia had launched a record 479 drones at its town and cities overnight. The attack was the biggest on western Ukraine since the start of Russia’s invasion, according to Oleksandr Tretyak, the mayor of Rivne, a city about 90 miles from Poland. Explosions were also heard in Lviv, the region’s biggest city.
There were no immediate reports of deaths or significant damage to civilian infrastructure. However, Ukraine said that Russia had carried out a “massive” drone and missile strike on one of its operational airfields.
“[This was] one of the largest that Russia has inflicted on our state recently,” said Yuriy Ignat, the Ukrainian air forces spokesman. He did not identify the airfield in question or give details about casualties or damage.
Russian drones targeted the city of Kharkiv over the weekend
SHUTTERSTOCK EDITORIAL
On Monday night all four major airports in Moscow had temporarily halted flights, the local civil aviation authority said, while Russian drones bombarded the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.
Earlier in the day, Ukraine said it had struck Russian warplanes at an airfield about 200 miles from Moscow that is regularly used for bombing raids. Ukraine’s general staff said it had hit a MiG-31 and either a Su-30 or Su-34 fighter jet on the attack on the Savasleyka airfield in the Nizhny Novgorod region. It said it was still clarifying the extent of the damage.
Last week an audacious Ukrainian drone attack on warplanes at airfields deep inside Russia caused significant damage to the Kremlin’s fleet of strategic bombers. A western diplomat told Reuters that President Putin was planning a “huge, vicious and unrelenting” response to the Spiderweb operation.
Russia will soon be capable of launching more than 500 long-range drones a night at Ukraine as it ramps up production and constructs new launch sites, a source in Ukrainian military intelligence told the Kyiv Independent website last week.