Early Sunday, a volley of Russian missiles slammed into the Ukrainian training facility at Yavoriv, Ukraine. Thirty-five people were killed and an additional 135 injured.
The facility is ten miles from the Polish border and about 65 miles from the Polish city of Rzeszow. Both of these locations are key. Rzeszow is the central transit hub for the movement of NATO weaponry to Ukraine. Late last week, we deployed two Patriot missile batteries to protect the airport in Rzeszow (NATO Sends Patriot Air Defense Missiles to Poland and Slovakia).
Death toll of Russian missile attack on the Yavoriv firing range in L’viv region increased to 35, 134 more wounded. At least 30 missiles were launched by strategic bombers over Black and Azov Seas https://t.co/WXZYVFsEOK #Ukraine
— Liveuamap (@Liveuamap) March 13, 2022
Yavoriv is a major training facility where US forces have trained Ukrainian soldiers for years. The Russians claim they killed a sh**-ton (unclear if that is an English or Metric sh**-ton) of “mercenaries.”
On Sunday, Russia’s Ministry of Defense issued a statement threatening more such attacks. “At these facilities, the Kyiv regime deployed a training center for foreign mercenaries before being sent to the areas of hostilities against Russian military personnel, as well as a storage base for weapons and equipment coming from foreign countries,” the statement said.
“As a result of the strike,” the statement added, “up to 180 foreign mercenaries and a large consignment of foreign weapons were destroyed. The destruction of foreign mercenaries who arrived on the territory of Ukraine will continue.”
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Photos from the Yavoriv training area in Lviv that was targeted by Russian missiles today.https://t.co/PpSwtpgjqD pic.twitter.com/5NcWijHAlW
— Rob Lee (@RALee85) March 13, 2022
According to reports, the Russians launched 30 cruise missiles from strike aircraft flying from the direction of the Russian-occupied zone in Eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainians claim to have shot down several of the missiles en route.
In my view, this attack was carried out to send a message to NATO. We are now 17 days into Vladimir Putin’s planned 72-hour cakewalk. The Russians have committed some 120-130,000 troops to the area of operations and achieved a stalemate. Russian supply lines are under attack by Ukrainian forces, and some Russian units will soon be in the position of being unable to either advance or retreat for lack of fuel, ammunition, and food. NATO continues to flood Ukraine with top-of-the-line armaments by way of Poland.
The Russians are no more happy about that than we were about the continuous flow of Russian arms into North Vietnam and on Saturday declared that NATO weapons shipments would be considered legitimate targets (NATO Weapons Shipments to Ukraine Are ‘Legitimate Targets,’ Russia Declares). Then, one day later, a major supply depot and training facility that has been untouched during the nearly three weeks of war and just happens to be located within spitting distance of Poland is hit with multiple missiles. It could be a coincidence or not.
What the Russians seem to be doing is pushing Joey SoftServe around. In baseball parlance, they’ve just given him a brushback pitch. They’ve already bullied Biden into backing out of a transfer of fighter aircraft from Poland, Bulgaria, and Slovakia to Ukraine. The submissive urination that the threat to attack weapons shipments elicited in the White House has probably convinced the Russians that if they lob missiles at a base that transfer materiel from Poland to the Ukrainian Army and where US soldiers used to train that same Army that Biden will stop Poland from allowing weapons to pass through its territory.
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