testing the west
Russia strikes base near Polish border, killing 35
Russian warplanes struck a Ukrainian military base less than 25 miles from the Polish border on Sunday, killing 35 people and injuring over 100, Reuters reports.
According to The New York Times, officials said around 30 missiles were fired at the base but air defense systems intercepted 22 of them before impact. Fires continued burning for at least five hours after the attack.
Russia began striking targets in western Ukraine on Friday, with attacks on military airfields in Lutsk and Ivano-Frankivsk.
According to the Times, the base Russia hit on Sunday was being used to ferry weapons sent from international partners to the front and to train foreign fighters.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned the United States on Saturday that "pumping Ukraine with weapons from a number of countries" would "turn the corresponding convoys into legitimate targets."
Harry Kazianis, the director of defense studies at the Center for the National Interest, wrote at The Federalist that Russian operations near NATO's eastern border could risk escalating the conflict.
"A Russian ballistic missile's guidance system fails and crash-lands into NATO member Poland, killing 34 civilians as it tragically lands into a populated village along the Polish-Ukraine border … [D]emands for justice and revenge mount," he wrote, describing his experience in a 2019 war games exercise in which high-ranking past and present U.S. government officials simulated a conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
The simulation ended with a nuclear exchange between Russia and NATO that left one billion people dead.