Russian missiles strike Ukrainian military training base near Poland, killing dozens

NATO troops have for years deployed to the military facility, about 15 miles from the Polish border, also known as the International Peacekeeping and Security Center, for training alongside Ukrainian troops, with Americans on-site as recently as February.

Ukrainian authorities said earlier they were trying to determine whether foreigners were there Sunday, while a NATO official, speaking under condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation, said the military alliance had no personnel inside the country.

Sunday’s attack hit a region in Ukraine’s west that had so far seen less fighting than eastern cities closer to the frontier with Russia, which have been pummeled by airstrikes and choked off by sieges since Russian tanks rolled in across the border over two weeks ago. Waves of people seeking refuge from violence further east have poured into Lviv, which has become a hub for the internally displaced.

On CNN’s “State of the Union" Sunday, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the bombing of a military base in Western Ukraine did not come as a surprise to the American intelligence and national security community. Sullivan noted that the United States had been warned “well before the invasion got underway” that Putin planned to attack all of Ukraine — “southern Ukraine, eastern Ukraine, and yes, Western Ukraine."

“What it shows is that Vladimir Putin is frustrated by the fact that his forces are not making the kind of progress that he thought that they would make against major cities, including Kyiv," Sullivan said. "That he is expanding the number of targets that he is lashing out (at) and that he is trying to cause damage in every part of the country.”

Sullivan reiterated President Biden’s insistence that U.S. military forces would not be fighting Russian troops in Ukraine, but that they would “defend every inch of NATO territory.”

The barrage of missiles slammed into the base near Lviv a day after the Kremlin warned that it viewed Western weapons shipments as “legitimate targets,” heightening the possibility of a direct confrontation. There was no immediate comment from Moscow on Sunday.

The Lviv regional governor accused Russia of firing 30 missiles at the Yavoriv facility from the direction of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, warning that “the shelling is approaching the borders of NATO countries.” Ukraine’s air defense system shot down many of them and authorities had put out fires at the site, he added.

“Do you understand that war is closer than you imagine?” the Lviv mayor said in a Telegram message, addressing the United States and the European Union.

Members of the National Guard were training there with Ukrainian forces up until February, until Washington ordered U.S. troops to leave the country in the buildup to the Russian onslaught. “There are no NATO personnel in Ukraine,” a NATO official told The Washington Post after Sunday’s incident.

Until last month, the center had been home to a rotational presence of U.S. troops who were training and advising Ukrainian forces about a half-hour drive from the Polish border. The unit, Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine, most recently included about 150 members of the Florida National Guard, who were reassigned elsewhere in Europe.

Among the facilities on the base that appear to be hit are trailers where U.S. troops lived while deployed and a U.S.-funded simulation center used to train Ukrainian soldiers, said a member of the Illinois National Guard who was deployed there from June 2020 to April 2021 and reviewed available imagery Sunday.

Western-led military training at the base went back even prior to the establishment of the rotational unit with U.S. and other forces deploying there to train Ukrainian forces after Russian forces annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

At the time, the move was seen as an initial response by the Obama administration that fell short of sending the Ukrainians weapons.

Annabelle Chapman, Dan Lamothe, Rachel Pannett and Gerry Shih contributed to this report.