By Jekaterina Golubkova and Oleksandr Kozhukhar
July 30 (Reuters) – Russian ballistic missile strikes on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv killed at least one person early on Thursday, officials said, while neighbouring Poland scrambled fighter jets to secure its airspace.
Air raid alerts sounded across most regions of Ukraine, with a Reuters witness saying explosions were heard in Kyiv. A few non-residential sites caught fire, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app.
Earlier Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned a massive Russian attack was likely. In the western city of Lviv close to Poland, Russian missiles damaged two apartment buildings and injured six people, local officials said.
Zelenskiy said the safety of Ukrainians depended on the willingness of allies to provide anti-missile defences, as he returned from the United States where he said President Donald Trump agreed to give Ukraine licences for Patriot missiles.
“It is important that our partners fully understand what is happening and that the protection of people’s lives depends directly on their willingness, or lack of willingness, to provide air defence missiles,” Zelenskiy wrote on Telegram.
Poland, a member of the European Union and NATO which shares a border with Ukraine, protectively scrambled fighter jets to protect its airspace amid Russian air strikes, its armed forces said on X.
“Fighter aircraft and an early warning aircraft have begun operations, while ground-based air defence systems and radar reconnaissance systems have reached a state of readiness,” they said, adding that the actions are of a preventive nature.
ATTACKS CONTINUE ON RUSSIA’S TOP ONLINE RETAILER
A warehouse of Russian top online retailer Wildberries caught fire in the western city of Penza after Ukraine’s drone attack, regional governor Oleg Melnichenko said on Telegram.
One person was injured and about 200 people evacuated from the site, he added, just a day after the company, which has become a frequent target of Ukraine’s attacks, evacuated another facility in central Russia.
Wildberries has redirected its supply chains after the Penza attack, it said on Telegram.
Its losses pile on the pain for ordinary Russians, some of whom made online sales their main source of income, as Ukraine continues hitting energy facilities and refineries, deepening the fuel crisis in the world’s largest country by area.
Drone strikes have damaged nearly a dozen Wildberries warehouses recently, destroying about 10% of storage capacity and inflicting losses on tens of thousands of small businesses using the platform, the company and local authorities say.
Russia’s biggest bank, Sberbank, has warned it may have to boost loan-loss provisions as attacks on Wildberries hit the finances of online retailers and their suppliers.
(Reporting by Jekaterīna Golubkova and Oleksandr Kozhukhar; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien, Lincoln Feast and Clarence Fernandez)
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