The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky promised today a “strong” response after the Russian attack on an apartment building in Lvivin western Ukraine, from which four people were killedaccording to a newer report announced by the Minister of the Interior, Igor Klimenko.

“We will surely give an answer to the enemy. Strong (response),” Zelensky said on Telegram, accompanying his post with a video showing several heavily damaged buildings in the city.

After a “Russian missile attack, four people were killed and nine others were injured,” according to Klimenko, who added that searches were continuing for survivors or victims in the ruins.

“The third and fourth floors of two parts of the building were destroyed,” he added.

The governor of the district, Maxim Kozytskyi, posted a 13-second video showing a four-story apartment building, with parts of its highest floors missing or reduced to rubble.

For his part, the mayor of Lviv, Andriy Sandovii, commented on Telegram that “this is the biggest attack against the political infrastructure of Lviv since the beginning of the large-scale invasion” in Ukraine.

Serious damage

During the night, Kozytskyi had spoken of “enemy missiles” heading towards Ukraine’s western provinces, citing the Ukrainian military.

A “series of explosions” was then heard in Lviv, according to the city’s mayor. “The damage is huge, more than 50 apartments were destroyed (…) An office building was damaged, as well as the school building and the headquarters of the Lviv Polytechnic,” Sandovii emphasized.

“From the first explosion, pots fell from the window,” a Lviv resident told Radio Liberty, a US-funded radio station. “The second explosion destroyed everything. There is nothing left. Everything disappeared,” he added.

Lviv is several hundreds of kilometers from the war front, but it has been the target of attacks in the past.

On the night of June 19-20, Lviv’s “critical infrastructure” was hit by drones, the local governor said, while five people were killed in March in a strike against the Velika Wiltsanichya district in Lviv Oblast.

Counterattack

On the ground, Zelensky estimated that the slow delivery of arms to Ukraine delayed Kiev’s counteroffensive, which allowed Moscow to strengthen its defenses in the occupied territories, mainly by laying mines.

“I wanted our counter-attack to start much earlier because everyone understood that if the counter-attack starts later, then more of our ground will be mined (…) We give our enemy the time and opportunity to lay more mines and prepare the lines of his defense,” the Ukrainian president from Odessa told CNN’s Erin Burnett in an interview that aired yesterday, Wednesday, but was taped a few days earlier.

Zelensky pointed out that difficulties on the battlefield forced Ukrainian forces to advance their counterattack more slowly.

Lviv

The Ukrainian leader regularly pressures the US and its Western partners to provide his country with more modern weapons, such as long-range missiles and US-made F-16 fighter jets.

“I am grateful to the US (…) but I had told them, as well as the Europeans, that we would like to start our counterattack earlier and that we would need all kinds of weapons and equipment for that purpose,” he added.

Regarding the F-16s, Zelensky noted that “the goal is not even for Ukraine to gain air superiority over the Russians.” “The goal is to be equal. F-16s don’t just help those on the battlefield move forward. It’s just very difficult without air cover,” he stressed.