Putin steps up strikes on regions bordering NATO

At least three people were killed when a Russian missile slammed into a factory belonging to Sweden’s SFK ball bearing maker in Lutsk.

Journalists work near a block of flats hit by a missile fragment in Lviv, which has been one of Ukraine’s safer big cities, Picture: Getty Images

The Kremlin has staged its biggest attack on regions bordering NATO in western Ukraine since the start of its invasion almost 18 months ago.

At least three people were killed when a Russian missile slammed into a factory belonging to Sweden’s SFK ball bearing maker in Lutsk, a city less than 100km from Ukraine’s border with Poland, a member of NATO. An SKF spokesman said the factory produced bearings for heavy commercial vehicles, saying it was an “ordinary civilian activity”.

A 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.

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 in the western region of Ivano-Frankivsk this week a family buried an eight-year-old boy killed by Russian cruise missiles targeting a western air base.

Several missiles were downed over Lviv, where 19 people were wounded, regional governor Maksym Kozytskyi said.

Russia’s Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu made his assessment of Ukraine’s fighting capacity during a security conference in Moscow, from which Western firms were excluded.

“Despite comprehensive assistance from the West, Ukraine’s armed forces are unable to achieve results,” General Shoigu said.

Kyiv has acknowledged that progress against heavily fortified Russian positions has been slow, saying it had gained only a clutch of land around the war-battered city of Bakhmut last week. AFP