NATO was forced to scramble war planes over Poland overnight as Vladimir Putin launched a fresh wave of deadly strikes on Ukraine.
Russia staged a five-hour missile and drone onslaught on the strategic city of Pavlohrad – in the worst attack the area has suffered during the three-year war.
A fire station in the city was destroyed, with damage to industrial enterprises and a five-story residential building.
Meanwhile, one woman was killed and three people were wounded after a nine-storey apartment block was struck in Odesa.
Putin, however, saw his capital Moscow targeted by strikes for the third night in a row following Donald Trump’s reported advice for Ukraine to pressure the Kremlin.
Videos showed a series of explosion across the city and in Dmitrov, drone debris damaged a high-voltage power line.
Explosions were also heard in the Moscow suburbs of Odintsovo, Solnechnogorsk, Istra and Zelenograd.
One eyewitness was heard saying: ‘There it flies! Shoot it down, damn it! Damn it, shoot it down! Yes! ****!’ Another said: ‘Damn, this is crazy.’
Pictured: A destroyed building in Odesa following a Russian strike overnight
Ukrainian emergency service workers extinguish a fire in a residential building following a strike
One woman was killed and three people were wounded after a nine-storey apartment block was struck in Odesa
In Rostov, Ukrainian strikes caused massive train disruption on the Moscow–Rostov-on-Don main line, a key military supply route.
In response to the intense strikes on Ukraine, which involved more than 400 drones, NATO fighters were scrambled from military air bases.
‘Due to another attack by the Russian Federation targeting targets located in Ukrainian territory, air operations have commenced in our airspace,’ it was said in an announcement from the armed forces operation command in Poland.
‘Duty fighter pairs have been scrambled, and ground-based air defence and radar reconnaissance systems have been brought to the highest level of alert.’
The statement continued: ‘The measures taken are aimed at ensuring security in areas bordering the threatened areas.’
It came just hours after Putin’s crony Dmitry Medvedev warned that strikes on Ukraine would only intensify.
In a post raging against new Western sanctions, the deputy chairman of Russia’s security council declared: ‘We should also pursue maximum disengagement from the EU and its most odious members.
‘These now include not just the pathetic Balts, insolent Finns, Poles, whose partition was somehow left unfinished, and Brits, stewing in their own filth, but also Germany and France, whose leaders clearly aspire to the legacy of the Third Reich and the Vichy regime.’
US-president Trump previously blasted Putin as ‘two faced’, saying that ‘he talks nice, then bombs everybody’
One woman was killed and three people were wounded after a nine-storey apartment block was struck in Odesa
Ukrainian emergency service workers extinguish a fire in a residential building
Last night’s attacks follow reports that Trump had quizzed President Zelensky on why he has chosen not to strike to Moscow.
‘We can if you give us the weapons,’ Zelensky reportedly replied, according to the Washington Post.
Meanwhile, earlier this month Trump announced he would send Patriot air defense system to Ukraine to bolster the country’s defence capabilities.
The decision came as the US-president blasted Putin as ‘two faced’, saying that ‘he talks nice, then bombs everybody’.
Trump said: ‘We will send them Patriots, which they desperately need, because Putin really surprised a lot of people.
‘He talks nice and then bombs everybody in the evening. But there’s a little bit of a problem there. I don’t like it.
‘We basically are going to send them various pieces of very sophisticated military equipment.
‘They are going to pay us 100 percent for that, and that’s the way we want it.’
Trump’s deployment of the missiles marked a U-turn from how he campaigned on an ‘America First’ platform.
