https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-missiles-strike-ukrainian-military-training-base-near-polish-border-11647169428
A Russian airstrike on a Ukrainian military training center close to the Polish border threw into sharp relief the hazards of the Western push to deliver arms support to Kyiv while avoiding direct conflict with a nuclear adversary.
The airstrike killed 35 people at the facility in Yavoriv about 10 miles from the Polish border early Sunday, far to the west of where the conflict has been concentrated, one day after Moscow warned the West that it would consider arms deliveries to Ukraine as legitimate targets.
A large portion of the military aid from the West—one of the largest transfers of arms in history—passes through Poland into western Ukraine, part of the fine line the U.S. and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, allies are walking between aiding Ukraine militarily while steering clear of providing troops or enforcing a no-fly zone that Ukraine has called for.
The expansion of Russia’s aggression to a target close to Poland also increases the risk of the war encroaching on NATO territory, which the U.S. has warned would be treated as an attack on the alliance. Any strike on Poland would bring “the full force of the NATO alliance to bear in responding to it,” Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, said in an interview Sunday on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry said more attacks aimed at supply lines and foreign mercenaries supporting Ukraine were in the offing.
Armaments supplied to Ukraine by the U.S. and its European allies—especially antitank and antiaircraft weapons—have played an important role in checking the advance of Russian ground troops, who have suffered heavy casualties in the north as they have tried to encircle the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.
But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that military aid alone might not be enough to enable Ukraine to fight off Russia’s invasion, and has made increasingly urgent calls for a no-fly zone that would protect the supplies entering the country and the refugees fleeing to neighboring countries.
The U.S. and its European allies have said a no-fly zone that involved other countries’ air forces risks escalating the conflict because it would only be effective if it were empowered to deter Russian planes. The U.S. also last week declined to support a Polish plan to give the U.S. Soviet-built MiG-29 combat jets after the U.S. had broached the prospect of Poland supplying the planes directly to Ukraine.
While the West aids Ukraine, Russia has asked China for military equipment and other assistance for its war effort, according to U.S. officials, who didn’t specify what Russia had requested.
News of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s request for help from Beijing, first reported by the Washington Post, comes as Mr. Sullivan heads to Rome on Monday to meet with a top Chinese official to discuss Ukraine.
Mr. Sullivan spoke on CNN on Sunday of the growing concern inside the Biden administration that Russia might be looking for help in the conflict, though he didn’t acknowledge a specific request from Russia to China.
“We are also watching closely to see the extent to which China actually does provide any form of support, material support or economic support, to Russia,” Mr. Sullivan said. “It is a concern of ours, and we have communicated to Beijing that we will not stand by and allow any country to compensate Russia for its losses from the economic sanctions.”
In addition to supplying arms, the Biden administration and its allies have shared intelligence with Kyiv and inflicted sweeping economic sanctions against Russia. But they are facing calls from some quarters to do more.
A Republican senator on Sunday said the Biden administration shouldn’t necessarily let the prospect of the U.S. entering direct combat with Russia stop it from sending more assistance to Ukraine.
“You always have to keep in mind that you don’t want to escalate to a direct confrontation with Russia,” Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on “Fox News Sunday.” But he added: “I wouldn’t call it World War Three. I think if the thing did get away there, I think it would end pretty quickly because with the conventional forces that [Russia has] had there, you know, we haven’t seen this kind of ineptness in a long, long time.”
Moscow has been closely following the tenor of the discussions over how much assistance the West should provide Ukraine, with state-run media noting last week that Poland had become a supply hub for Western military aid flowing into Ukraine—a fact the West had trumpeted until recently.
Russian invasion
Areas no longer controlled by Ukraine as of Friday
Direction of invasion forces
RUSSIA
Controlled by or allied to Russia
Primary refugee crossing locations
Chernobyl
Not in operation
Ukraine territory, recognized by Putin as independent
Nuclear facilities
BELARUS
Kharkiv
Rivne
POLAND
Kyiv
Luhansk
Khmelnitsky
Dnipro
Lviv
Donetsk
UKRAINE
Controlled by
separatists
Zaporizhzhia
Mariupol
South
Ukraine
Transnistria
Sea of Azov
Kherson
MOLDOVA
Odessa
ROMANIA
CRIMEA
Sevastopol
Black Sea
200 miles
200 km
Russian invasion
BELARUS
Areas no longer controlled by Ukraine as of Friday
Direction of invasion forces
Controlled by or allied to Russia
RUSSIA
Ukraine territory, recognized by Putin as independent
Primary refugee crossing locations
Chernobyl
Not in operation
Nuclear facilities
Rivne
Kharkiv
POLAND
Kyiv
Luhansk
Khmelnitsky
Dnipro
Lviv
Donetsk
UKRAINE
Controlled by
separatists
Zaporizhzhia
Mariupol
Kherson
South
Ukraine
Transnistria
Sea of Azov
MOLDOVA
Odessa
CRIMEA
ROMANIA
200 miles
Sevastopol
Black Sea
200 km
Russian invasion
Areas no longer controlled by Ukraine as of Friday
Direction of invasion forces
Controlled by or allied to Russia
Primary refugee crossing locations
RUSSIA
Ukraine territory, recognized by Putin as independent
Nuclear facilities
Chernobyl
Not in operation
BELARUS
Rivne
Kharkiv
Kyiv
Luhansk
Khmelnitsky
Dnipro
Lviv
Donetsk
UKRAINE
Controlled by
separatists
Zaporizhzhia
Mariupol
Kherson
South
Ukraine
Transnistria
Sea of Azov
MOLDOVA
Odessa
ROMANIA
CRIMEA
200 miles
Black Sea
Sevastopol
200 km
Russian invasion
Areas no longer controlled by Ukraine as of Friday
Direction of invasion forces
Controlled by or allied to Russia
Primary refugee crossing locations
Nuclear facilities
RUSSIA
Ukraine territory, recognized by Putin as independent
BELARUS
Kharkiv
Kyiv
POL.
Luhansk
Lviv
Dnipro
Donetsk
UKRAINE
Kherson
Mariupol
Transnistria
MOL.
Odessa
CRIMEA
ROMANIA
200 miles
Sevastopol
Black Sea
200 km
Russian invasion
Areas no longer controlled by Ukraine as of Friday
Direction of invasion forces
Controlled by or allied to Russia
Primary refugee crossing locations
Nuclear facilities
RUSSIA
Ukraine territory, recognized by Putin as independent
BELARUS
Kharkiv
POL.
Kyiv
Donetsk
Donetsk
Lviv
Dnipro
Kherson
Transnistria
MOL.
Odessa
CRIMEA
ROMANIA
Sevastopol
200 miles
Black Sea
200 km
200 km
Sources: Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (Russia-controlled area in eastern Ukraine); Dr. Phillip Karber, Potomac Foundation (Russian incursions, refugee crossing locations); International Atomic Energy Agency, Energoatom (nuclear facilities)
Max Rust and Emma Brown/The Wall Street Journal
NATO allies openly publicized their first shipments, with some sharing news of their deliveries on Facebook and Twitter.
Allies have since become more discreet, although the furious pace of deliveries has continued. At least seven military cargo jets from NATO allies landed on Saturday alone at the provincial airport of Rzeszow, in southern Poland.
Sunday’s strike on the military training facility comes as Moscow has shown off its ability to bomb targets throughout Ukraine. Ukraine’s military said at a briefing Sunday that a Russian bomber, based in the Russian city of Saratov, launched the rockets from over the Black Sea.
Ukrainian antiaircraft missile batteries destroyed most of the rockets, but eight reached their target at the Yavoriv military base, Ukraine’s military said. Survivors of the attack said the Russian rockets targeted barracks.
For years, the military base in Yavoriv hosted maneuvers involving live small-arms fire, tanks, artillery, air defense and combat helicopters. The U.S. and other countries have instructed the Ukrainian military there on NATO weapons and standards; troops from the Florida National Guard left last month.
Ambulances carried the wounded to the nearby city of Novoyavorivsk, where doctors triaged dazed men.
“I heard the first flash, the second, the third,” said a soldier who gave his name as Oleksandr and was treated at a Novoyavorivsk hospital. “Everyone was asleep. We didn’t hear any sirens.”
Several said the strikes concentrated on living quarters. “They hit exactly where the manpower was, exactly where we were,” said a man who gave his name as Volodymyr, as he smoked a cigarette through a gap in the bandages on his face.
When an air raid sounded, doctors aided the wounded in a darkened hospital cellar, where several women clutched newborns and prayed in unison to the Virgin Mary.
On high alert after the strike, militiamen at an armed checkpoint west of the training center laid a chain of spikes across the road.
Russia’s Defense Department claimed its strike on the facility in Yavoriv killed as many as 180 foreign mercenaries, a figure that couldn’t be confirmed. “The destruction of foreign mercenaries on the territory of Ukraine will continue,” the Defense Department added.
A Ukrainian military spokesman said there were no foreigners among the dead or wounded at the base, as did the Yavoriv mayor’s office. Doctors at the hospital treating the wounded said there were no foreigners among them.
The Yavoriv military base targeted by Russia sits near a thoroughfare between Poland and Lviv, a city in western Ukraine that has been serving as a logistical hub.
Missiles also hit an airport near the city of Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine on Sunday morning, the third attack on the city since the invasion began, the mayor said.
—Drew Hinshaw in Warsaw contributed to this article.
Write to Alan Cullison at alan.cullison@wsj.com and Brett Forrest at brett.forrest@wsj.com
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Appeared in the March 14, 2022, print edition as ‘Russia Strikes Near Poland Border.’
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