At least 10 people have been killed in a Russian missile strike on an apartment building in Lviv, Ukrainian officials said, describing it as the “heaviest attack” on the city’s civilian areas since Russia's full-scale invasion last year.
The Interior Ministry said on July 6 that 42 people, including a child, were wounded in the nighttime attack, which destroyed the roof and the top two floors of a residential building.
Some 60 apartments and 50 cars were damaged in the cruise missiles strikes, according to city authorities. Emergency crews rescued seven people from the rubble and evacuated 64 others.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy shared a video online that showed buildings with parts of their roofs and upper floors destroyed, windows smashed, and rescuers searching through the rubble for survivors.
He offered condolences to the families of the victims. "There definitely will be a response to the enemy. It will be a noticeable one,” he said.
Ukraine’s Air Force said it intercepted seven of the 10 Kalibr cruise missiles that Russian forces fired from Black Sea toward Lviv Province and its namesake regional capital at around 1 a.m. on July 6.
Located near Ukraine’s western border with Poland, Lviv is more than 500 kilometers from the front lines of the war in eastern and southern Ukraine, where Kyiv’s counteroffensive to dislodge Russian forces is in its early stages.
In an interview aired on July 5, Zelenskiy said the counteroffensive started later than he wanted because the West failed to supply needed weaponry early, allowing Russian forces more time to set up and fortify defenses.
WATCH: Russian forces on July 6 launched a deadly cruise missile attack on the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. The strike, which destroyed a residential apartment block, is being called one of the "heaviest attacks" on the city's civilian areas.
Speaking in an interview with CNN, broadcast on July 5, Zelenskiy said that the delay added difficulties on the battlefield when the counterattack was finally launched last month.
His comments also come at a crucial point in the conflict after a short-lived armed rebellion by troops led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner private mercenary group on June 23.
“I’m grateful to the U.S. as the leaders of our support,” the Ukrainian leader said in the interview from the Ukrainian port city of Odesa.
“I wanted our counteroffensive to happen much earlier, because everyone understood that if the counteroffensive unfolds later, then a bigger part of our territory will be mined. We give our enemy the time and possibility to place more mines and prepare their defensive lines,” he added.
Since launching a counteroffensive earlier in June, Ukraine says it has reasserted control over clusters of villages in the southeast. But Kyiv has suggested that it still has not deployed the bulk of Ukraine's Western-trained forces and heavy equipment.
Zelenskiy again made an appeal for the advanced weaponry -- including F-16 fighter jets -- he says is needed to broaden the counteroffensive and push Russian forces back.
Aftermath Of Deadly Russian Missile Attack On Ukraine's Lviv
Kyiv has repeatedly said it needs Western aircraft to help it successfully counter the aerial dominance Moscow has established since launching its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
“In some directions, it will give us an opportunity to start the counteroffensive.... In some directions, we cannot even think of starting it, as we don’t have the relevant weapons. And throwing our people to be killed by Russian long-range weapons would be simply inhumane,” Zelenskiy said.
“It’s not even about the Ukrainian advantage in the sky over the Russians.... This is only about being equal. F-16s help not only those on the battlefield to move forward. It is simply very difficult without cover from the air,” he added.
The dust is still settling in Russia after Prigozhin, a Kremlin-connected restauranteur who built Russia’s most notorious private mercenary company and became a merciless critic of how Russia’s military waged war on Ukraine, led the Wagner march on Moscow that saw little opposition from the military and ordinary citizens.
Commenting on the attempted mutiny, Zelenskiy said he expected Russian President Vladimir Putin would move quickly to try to "consolidate his power" after the gravest challenge to his 23 years as Russia's preeminent leader.
“We see Putin’s reaction. It’s weak,” Zelenskiy said. “Firstly, we see he doesn’t control everything. Wagner’s moving deep into Russia and taking certain regions shows how easy it is to do. Putin doesn’t control the situation in the regions.... All that vertical power he used to have is just crumbling down."
