LEUPOL – At 8:30 p.m., the mayor of Lviv, Andrei Sadovy, is forced to hastily conclude the press conference because another anti-aircraft siren begins to howl as he informs us of his last dreary day. But he has time to say that “Biden is welcome,” and that Putin’s missiles first landed near the center of Lviv, the Ukrainian gateway to Europe where 200,000 refugees have sought refuge, the pearl of the Habsburgs where there are ambassadors from all over the world. Move the World, a UNESCO heritage city just 60 kilometers from the Polish border, is a clear nod to Biden speaking in Warsaw in the evening. 250 km from here, in the same minutes that Putin’s missiles fell, the US president said, “By God, this man can’t stay in power,” he’s a “butcher.”
The first siren in the afternoon was followed by three explosions that could be clearly heard even from the city center. But the head of the regional administration, Maxim Kositsky, declared that the missile attacks were “two” and that there were “five wounded”, and fortunately there were no casualties. Later, after examining the place where the missile hit, Kositzky described the situation as “under control.” But according to military sources, there were already three missiles in the first attack, one of which would have been destroyed in flight, and the other two would hit, even according to the city authorities, a “fuel depot” northeast of the city, on the slopes of the TV Tower hill.
From Warsaw, Biden addresses the Russians: “Putin cannot stay, he is a butcher dictator”
By our correspondent Paolo Mastrolli
In the late afternoon, the second missile attack occurred, which this time was to hit a “military target” according to Mayor Sadovy – possibly a tank factory on the outskirts of the city. The mayor of Lviv noted that both explosions would have taken place “in the vicinity of residential areas” and that the second explosion would have smashed school windows. But while he was speaking at the press conference, the third anti-aircraft alert went off in the evening.
Until now, the western part of Ukraine was almost spared from Russian attack. In the past few weeks, sirens have sounded repeatedly. It starts automatically when a Russian missile leaves the Black Sea or Belarus. But the bombs exploded dangerously twice only near Lviv. A week ago at the airport, I hit a warehouse. The first time on March 13, missiles hit a military training center in Yavoriv, about 20 kilometers from the Polish border, causing a massacre: 35 soldiers were killed and 134 wounded. Today is the first time that the missiles have reached the city.
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