Unidentified projectile causes explosion in Poland as Russia launches large attack on Ukraine

Kyiv — An unidentified object crashed in a Polish village about 95 kilometers (60 miles) from the Ukrainian border early Thursday, causing an explosion, Polish authorities said, as Russia launched deadly longe-range attacks across Ukraine. The projectile crashed near the village of Tarnawa-Kolonia in Lublin province, Poland’s army said. Polish police said residents reported hearing a powerful explosion.

Poland had earlier scrambled fighter jets in response to Russian attacks on Ukraine, which hit large swathes of the country and killed at least seven people, including children, and left several people trapped under rubble. The overnight assault came one day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met US President Donald Trump at the White House and asked him to provide Ukraine with additional air defense systems. Russia’s Ministry of Defense said it carried out a “massive strike using long-range precision weapons from land, air, and sea” as well as attack drones on military sites across Ukraine, in a statement posted to Telegram Thursday. The attacks – which come as Ukraine has seen its heaviest number of civilian casualties in one month since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 – killed at least one person in the capital Kyiv, according to local authorities. In the southern Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, six people were killed after a ballistic missile hit a home where a large family lived, Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the city’s military administration, said on Telegram. Two girls aged 5 and 12 were among those killed, he said, calling it a “dark night.” At least eight additional people had been wounded, Vilkul said, adding that the death toll could go up as emergency crews work to clear the damage. Rescue workers were also trying to save people trapped under rubble after an attack on Lviv, near the Polish border, according to the city’s mayor Andriy Sadovyi. More than a dozen people were wounded, according to the head of the Lviv military administration.