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A Russian Kh-101 cruise missile crossed into Poland during Moscow's massive overnight barrage against Ukraine, Kyiv said, a violation of NATO airspace confirmed by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk after authorities found a crater and debris in the Lublin region, as the strike killed at least eight people across Ukraine, including parents and three children in a single home.
The attack of 74 missiles and 284 drones, one of the war's largest combined strikes, drew renewed pleas from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for anti-ballistic missiles amid what he called a "critical shortage" and included Russian claims of hits on three cargo ships near Odesa, extending the war's assault on Black Sea shipping.
"Overnight, a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile crossed into Poland as part of Russia's massive strike against Ukraine, violating NATO airspace," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on X.
"This is yet another clear demonstration that strengthening Ukraine's air defense now is urgent and serves as a guarantee for the protection of the entire Euro-Atlantic community," he added.
Tusk confirmed "there was a violation of Polish airspace" and met his defense team in the morning.
Poland's Operational Command said one object came within about 5 kilometers of the border before turning away, while another briefly entered Polish airspace, prompting an F-16 to identify it.
The object disappeared from radar at 3:46 a.m. and is suspected to have crashed in an undeveloped area of the Lublin region, according to Polish broadcaster TVP World.
Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz said it had been "an extremely difficult night" for the country's air defenses and threat detection systems, adding that authorities were "currently working to determine what type of object fell near the village of Tarnawa-Kolonia."
Police in Lublin Voivodeship found a crater about 10 meters wide and scattered debris from an "unidentified object" between the villages of Tarnawa Kolonia and Tokary, roughly 90 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
An Mi-24 helicopter located the probable crash site, and search teams were dispatched.
Air raid sirens woke Lublin and Krasnystaw as Poland scrambled fighter jets and an airborne early warning aircraft in what the military called preventive measures.
Sybiha said the incursion "serves as a reminder that there is nothing more urgent for our two countries than countering our common, ages-old enemy... All other disagreements must be put aside during this brutal war."
"Last night, a Russian missile strike on Radushne in the Dnipro region killed parents and three children. Two more children were pulled alive from under the rubble. It was an ordinary home, blown into smithereens by a ballistic missile," Zelenskyy wrote on X.
At least six people were killed, and 10 injured in the missile strike on the Novopillya community near Kryvyi Rih, Dnipropetrovsk Governor Oleksandr Hanzha said in a statement on Telegram, with two more injured in drone strikes on Nikopol.
One person was killed in Kyiv and two injured, the State Emergency Service said, and one person was killed in the Poltava region, where strikes hit warehouse facilities and a Nova Poshta courier terminal.
In Lviv, 31 people were injured in a missile strike that damaged two multi-story buildings, two kindergartens, and a school, Governor Maksym Kozytskyi said in a statement on Telegram.
Five people were injured in the Kyiv region's Brovary district.
Ukraine's Air Force recorded 358 incoming weapons:
Ukrainian air defenses downed or suppressed 320 targets, 55 missiles and 265 drones, but only one of the nine ballistic missiles, with impacts recorded at 20 locations, the General Staff announced in a statement.
Zelenskyy, who warned late Wednesday of a "high probability" of a massive overnight attack, said mobile fire teams and combat aviation were compensating for depleted stocks: "Given the critical shortage of air defense missiles from our partners, our warriors are accomplishing truly incredible things."
"Untimely assistance and delays in the delivery of anti-ballistic missiles lead to this kind of destruction, these kinds of casualties that, unfortunately, we are seeing today," he said, urging that "every decision on additional air defense capabilities for Ukraine now needs to be taken without delay," an appeal aimed first at partners holding Patriot interceptors.
Sybiha said 74 missiles, "many of them ballistic," and hundreds of drones targeted Kyiv, Lviv, Dnipro, Poltava, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Sumy, Vinnytsia, Cherkasy and other regions, urging "strong international reactions" and pressure so that "the cost of continuing this war for Putin must far exceed the cost of ending it."
Russia's Defense Ministry announced that it launched a "massive" precision strike on "military airfields, military-industrial complex facilities, and military telecommunications and logistics centers" involved in missile and drone production, storage and delivery across Kyiv, Lviv, and five other regions.
The ministry also said it struck a dry cargo ship in the port of Pivdennyi and two more east and south of Odesa that it claimed were "delivering weapons and military equipment," claims that could not be independently verified and that follow a string of strikes on civilian vessels across the Black Sea, including attacks that have killed Turkish and other foreign seafarers.
Moscow additionally claimed to have downed 258 Ukrainian drones overnight, as Russian retailer Wildberries reported another warehouse damaged in Penza and a logistics site attacked in Udmurtia amid Ukraine's deep-strike campaign it calls "long-range sanctions."
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