LVIV, Ukraine— Two missile strikes hit targets on Saturday evening in Lviv, a western Ukrainian city about 50 miles from the Polish border.
The city’s mayor said Russian missiles launched from Sevastopol hit an oil and gas terminal belonging to the railway station and what officials described as a factory producing important military goods. No one was killed but five people were injured.
“I think with these strikes, the aggressor wants to say hello to President Biden who is in Poland, 70 kilometers (43 miles) from Lviv, mayor Andriy Sadoviy said at a news conference as an air raid siren sounded overhead. “The threat is very serious.”
The attack came as President Biden was in Warsaw wrapping up a visit to Europe intended to bolster unity over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Mr. Biden said the United States treated its duty to defend NATO allies as “a sacred obligation.”
It also came the day after Russian officials said they would be focusing their efforts on eastern Ukraine, where Russia-backed separatists have been fighting for eight years.
“The strikes are very clearly aimed at infrastructure,” said Mr. Sadoviy. “The destruction is serious,” he added, noting that a kindergarten was damaged.
Maksym Kozytsky, chairman of the Lviv regional administration, said in a post on Telegram that three more explosions detonated several hours later, around 7 p.m. local time. She urged residents to remain at home and seek shelter. Given the location of the second strike, local residents said they believed a tank factory was targeted.
On March 18, missiles hit a factory near the city that repairs warplanes near the city’s airport on Mar. 18, but Lviv, home to 700,000 people before many of them fled the war, has otherwise been spared the airstrikes and missile attacks that have pounded other Ukrainian cities. About 400,000 displaced Ukrainians are now in the Lviv region, Mr. Kozytsky said Thursday.
Photographs of the projectiles in flight taken by news photographers appeared to show cruise missiles with their telltale wings.
“The sooner we receive quality weapons and systems for air defense the safer we will be,” said Mr. Sadoviy, urging Western countries to donate more weapons.
Some residents said the strikes had raised fears about what had up to now been a relatively peaceful place to live. “They’ve started here now, I don’t know how well we can manage our business further,” said Andriy, 39, who owns a construction business but did not want to share his last name because of concerns for his security.
“Seems like the situation in the city will start to change from now on, that everything will start to lock down soon.”