Nato warned ‘very little time’ left before Russia attacks Poland as 35 killed in strikes

Russia's latest assault targeted a military base 35km from Ukraine's border with Poland

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Nato has been warned there is “very little time” left before Russian forces attack Poland, after an assault on a Ukrainian military site near the Polish border killed 35 people and injured 134.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s troops conducted an air strike overnight on the Yavoriv military range, a site 35 kilometres from the border with Poland.

American and Nato troops have in the past used the site, also known as the International Peacekeeping and Security Centre, to train Ukrainian military personnel. The centre has also hosted international Nato drills.

The governor of the Lviv region, Maksym Kozytskyi, said Russian forces fired more than 30 cruise missiles at the site, 30km north-west of the city of Lviv. He said on Telegram that the strikes had killed 35 people and wounded 134.

The attack took the war closer to the border with Poland, an EU and Nato member state, after a senior Russian diplomat warned that Moscow considers foreign shipments of military equipment to Ukraine “legitimate targets”.

Ukrainian MP Lesia Vasylenko, who is on a diplomatic mission in Strasbourg to rally Western powers to offer more support to Ukraine and tighten the economic noose on Russia’s economy, said Mr Putin would not stop in Ukraine.

“This is how far they are pushing now. The Russians are really pushing on the borders and I think it’s going to be very little time before they start attacking Poland,” she told Sky News on Sunday.

The politician said people living close to the Polish border had been awoken by the attack, and were “sending messages saying that they heard tremors in their homes as everything in the night shook.”

Ms Vasylenko is urging the EU to speed up the process to allow Ukraine to join the bloc, and hit out at what she called “half measures” imposed by some western nations against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

“Germany, France, the major countries, they are not doing nearly as much as they could be doing,” she said.

Mr Kozytskyi described Russia's latest attack as a “strike by air-to-surface missiles".

Ukraine’s military was able to intercept some Russian missiles launched at the centre in Yavoriv, he said, reiterating calls for the West to enforce a no-fly zone.

Russia has been striking targets in western Ukraine more frequently in recent days, including bombing several airports on Friday. The Russian military also continues to target sites around Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and fierce fighting has been reported there.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov on Saturday warned that Western convoys of weapons deliveries to Ukraine are “legitimate targets,” stepping up its threats amid a major increase in military supplies to Kyiv’s forces.

The US on Saturday authorised another $200 million (£153 million) in military aid for Ukraine. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said it would include “further defensive assistance” to help the country “meet the armoured, airborne, and other threats it is facing.”

Updated: March 14, 2022, 7:48 AM