The echoes of apocalyptic thunderclaps shook Kyiv awake before sunrise on Sunday. In a visceral display of firepower, Russia uncorked a heavybarrage of missiles and drones on Ukraine’s capital and western cities. The ominous volleys sparked fears the conflict could rupture across borders as Poland hastily readied air defenses.
“Explosions are reverberating through Kyiv’s central areas…air raid sirens wail,” an anguished Vitali Klitschko, the besieged city’s mayor, relayed on Telegram. “Take cover until the alert passes.”
To the west, the city of Lviv – a scant 50 miles from Poland – also found itself in the Kremlin’s bombsights. Its mayor Andriy Sadovy reported around 20 missiles and 7 Iranian-supplied drones hammered Lviv’s critical infrastructure.
In a harbinger of potential escalation, Poland’s military revealed one of the Russian projectiles had trespassed into its airspace for 39 harrowing seconds before continuing towards Ukraine. The rogue missile triggered air defense radars, with Polish jets primed to blast it from the skies if it had aimed for their nation.
“The Polish Air Force remains on high alert due to intensive Russian long-range aviation ops overnight,” a statement by Poland’s Armed Forces Operational Command cautioned.
The indiscriminate savagery follows a devastating attack days earlier at a Moscow concert, where at least 133 Russians perished in an blast claimed by ISIS militants. But President Vladimir Putin has defiantly pinned blame on Kyiv despite its adamant disavowals.
“That snake Putin shamelessly scapegoated Ukraine after idly slithering in silence for a whole day,” raged President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a video address. “His mindset was clearly plotting how to manipulate that tragedy to justify further aggression.”
Putin’s motives for remapping his scourge seem transparently cynical – bludgeoning Ukraine’s relatively calmer western flanks to sever lifelines of Western military aid. Undeterred by a year of grueling attrition, he may feel pressure to provoke NATO overtly for a high-stakes gambit at revisionist victory.
As westering airbursts rock cities like Kyiv anew, its steely civilians are entombed yet again in subterranean shelters. Signs ominously point towards Putin’s grislywillingness to foster escalatory chaos if it muddies realities on the ground.
The alleswill be watching whether Russia’s baying warmongers champ at the bit for an ember that incinerates Poland – and of how far Putin will carry his blind ambitions once dangled before that line.
