Russia strikes Ukraine military base near Polish border as it steps up its offensive

Foreign military instructors have previously worked at the base

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A Russian air strike on a large Ukrainian military facility near the border with NATO member Poland on Sunday killed 35 people and wounded 134, a local Ukrainian official said, as other officials reported intense Russian attacks around the country.

Britain said the incident, just 25km from the Polish border, marked a "significant escalation" of the conflict.

US President Joe Biden has said NATO would defend every inch of its territory if Russia's invasion of Ukraine spills over into member states of the Western defence alliance.

Ukraine said foreign military instructors have previously worked at the Yavoriv International Center for Peacekeeping and Security, but a NATO official said there were no personnel from the alliance there. It was not immediately clear whether any non-NATO states might have representatives there.

Regional governor Maksym Kozytskyy said Russian planes fired around 30 rockets at the Yavoriv International Centre for Peacekeeping and Security, adding that some were intercepted before they hit.

The 360-square-km centre less than 25km from the Polish border, is one Ukraine's biggest and the largest in the western part of the country.

The Kremlin did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the reported missile strike so close to the border with Nato, and a short video briefing by Russia's defence ministry spokesman on Sunday made no mention of such an attack.

Nineteen ambulances with sirens on were seen by Reuters driving from the direction of the Yaroviv centre after the reported strike and black smoke rose from the area.

Reuters was not immediately able to verify exactly what had happened at the base.

“Russia has attacked the International Centre for Peacekeeping & Security near Lviv. Foreign instructors work here. Information about the victims is being clarified,” Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov said in an online post.

A Ukrainian defence ministry representative told Reuters the ministry was still trying to establish whether any foreign instructors were at the centre at the time of the attack.

Nato officials were not immediately available to comment.

Ukraine, whose aspirations to join Nato are a major irritant to Russian President Vladimir Putin, held most of its drills with countries in the western defence alliance at the base before the invasion. The last major exercises were in September.

In the weeks before Russia invaded on February 24, the Ukrainian military trained there, but according to Ukrainian media, all foreign instructors left the training ground in mid-February, while leaving all the equipment.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has sent more than 2.5 millions fleeing across borders and trapped thousands of people in besieged cities.

While western nations have sought to isolate Putin by imposing harsh sanctions, the United States and its allies are concerned to avoid Nato being drawn into the conflict.

Airport hit in west

The mayor of another city in western Ukraine, Ivano-Frankivsk, said Russian troops also continued to hit its airport, with no initial reports of casualties.

In eastern Ukraine, Russian troops are trying to surround Ukrainian forces as they advance from the port of Mariupol in the south and the second city Kharkiv in the north, the UK Defence Ministry said on Sunday.

Kharkhiv has suffered some of the heaviest Russian bombardment. Videos from one resident, Teimur Aliev, who is helping bring aid to residents, show badly bombed buildings lining streets, burnt out cars riddled with shrapnel holes and debris strewn across the ground.

“We will stitch up the wounds and the pain of our country and our city. We are ready to build it and we are ready to renew it when the war is over. We're not going anywhere,” Aliev, a 23-year-old musician, said of his food distribution network, which now has dozens of volunteers.

British intelligence also said Russian forces advancing from Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, were trying to circumvent Mykolaiv as they look to drive west towards Odesa.

Air raid sirens again woke residents in Kyiv on Sunday morning, hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiyy warned Russian forces they face a fight to the death if they try to occupy the capital.

Ukraine accused Russian forces on Saturday of killing seven civilians, including one child, in an attack on women and children trying to flee fighting near Kyiv.

Reuters was unable immediately to verify the report and Russia offered no immediate comment.

Moscow denies targeting civilians. It blames Ukraine for failed attempts to evacuate civilians from encircled cities, an accusation Ukraine and its western allies strongly reject.

More arms for Ukraine

The US said it would rush up to $200 million in additional small arms, anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons to Ukraine, where officials have pleaded for more military aid.

The Kremlin describes its actions as a “special operation” to demilitarise and “denazify” Ukraine. Ukraine and western allies call this a baseless pretext for a war of choice that has raised fears of wider conflict in Europe.

Polish President Andrzej Duda warned in an interview broadcast on Sunday that the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine by Russia would be a game-changer and Nato would have to think seriously about how to respond.

Western officials said on Friday that Russia might use chemical weapons in Ukraine in a “false flag” attack to provide a retrospective justification for its invasion, but there was nothing to suggest a broader use of such weapons in the war.

The US this week described renewed Russian accusations that Washington was operating bio-warfare labs in Ukraine as “laughable” and suggested Moscow may be laying the groundwork to use a chemical or biological weapon.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Saturday the situation had been complicated by convoys of western arms shipments to Ukraine that Russian forces considered “legitimate targets”.

In comments reported by the Tass news agency, Ryabkov made no specific threat. Any attack on such convoys before they reached Ukraine would risk widening the war.

Russian troops have destroyed 3,687 Ukrainian military infrastructure facilities so far, Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying on Sunday. It was not possible to independently verify his statement.