Photo: Wojtek Radwanski/AFP
Poland announced early Friday morning that it had dispatched fighter jets to Ukraine "to ensure the security of Polish airspace" because of the Russian shelling. On Sunday, Warsaw condemned the violation of its airspace by a Russian missile.
Russian drones and missiles attacked power plants in east-central Ukraine on Thursday evening, Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko said on Friday. An air raid alert was issued across Ukraine on Thursday night.
This "massive attack" was aimed mainly at energy production facilities in the Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava and Cherkasy regions, Galushchenko reported. According to Ukrainian energy supplier DTEK, three Ukrainian thermal power plants were damaged by Russian drone missile strikes. "The facilities were seriously damaged. After the attack, technicians quickly began to repair the damage," DTEK said.
The Ukrainian air force announced that Russian forces fired 99 drones and missiles into Ukrainian territory overnight and that its defence system managed to destroy 84 of them, including "58 drones and 26 missiles".
For his part, the head of the military administration of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Serhiy Lyssak, explained in a press release that "last night, air defence forces shot down ten drones over the region - in the districts of Pavlohrad, Kryvyi Rih, Dnipro and Kamianske. Four missiles were destroyed over the Dnieper. "Several power devices were damaged (...) A person was injured on one of them," Lyssak said.
In Kamiansk, an agricultural cooperative was hit and five people were injured - a five-year-old child and two women aged 19 and 47 who did not need to be hospitalised, and two men aged 36 and 47 who are in a serious condition.
The Polish army's operations command announced early Friday morning that fighter jets had taken off "to ensure the security of Polish airspace" after Russian missile strikes on Ukraine.
"Please note that Polish and allied aircraft have been activated, which may lead to an increase in noise levels, especially in the south-eastern part of the country," the command said in a message on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
"Tonight we are observing intense long-range aerial activity from the Russian Federation associated with missile strikes on objects located on Ukrainian territory," the report explains.
On Sunday, Poland condemned the "new violation of its airspace" for about 40 seconds by a Russian cruise missile fired against cities in western Ukraine. On Monday, Russia's ambassador to Poland ignored an official call by Polish authorities to explain the incident.
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