But it heightened fears in the region and in the United States that a miscalculation could dramatically expand the war. Thousands of American troops have been sent to Poland and other countries on the alliance’s eastern fringe, and President Biden and other Western leaders say a Russian attack on one of them will provoke a furious response.
A senior US defense official said the Russian shelling of the International Peace and Security Center did not change the position of US forces in Poland. The official said “more than a couple dozen” rockets were launched.
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The facility has been used by US and NATO forces in the past to train the Ukrainian military, and is currently home to about 1,000 foreign volunteers who have come to Ukraine to help in the war with Russia. A senior Defense Department official said the Pentagon “will have no way of knowing or tracing” whether any American citizens were among those killed or wounded in the attack, although he reiterated earlier statements indicating that neither US troops nor no government officials or defense contractors were on site. Yavoriv when the strike took place.
The facility is not a staging post for Western military aid, a senior US Department of Defense official said, contradicting Russian Defense Department claims that the base was used as a weapons and ammunition depot. Russian officials have warned that they consider arms deliveries to be “legitimate targets.”
U.S. and European officials have not disclosed any supply routes to Ukraine, so it is not clear if the facility was a staging post for weapons in the past.
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“I would just like to tell you that we have several ways to put security assistance in the hands of the Ukrainians,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters during a briefing on Monday afternoon. “It wasn’t one of them.
The fact that the attack took place in Russian airspace highlights the limitations of imposing a no-fly zone in Ukraine, a senior defense official said. The Biden administration has denied repeated requests by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and some US lawmakers who support the use of US military aircraft to guard the airspace. Others in Congress agree with the Pentagon’s assessment that such an operation would risk a direct collision between US and Russian aircraft.
“A no-fly zone will not stop all air activity,” a senior Defense Department official said on Monday. “It would spawn American pilots in combat with Russia.”
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Western Ukraine and its main city of Lviv have become a staging post for civilians fleeing war in other parts of the country, but recent strikes have shattered the notion that the area will remain a safe haven.
“This is the third military installation or airfield that the Russians have struck in western Ukraine in just the past couple of days,” Kirby said Sunday. “It’s so clear, at least from an airstrike perspective, that they’re expanding their set of targets.”