West doubts Kremlin statements
Russia claims to have destroyed US arms depots near Lviv
4/19/2022, 4:33 p.m
The west of Ukraine is relatively safe compared to the east. But now the war is reaching Lviv near the Polish border. Seven people die in Russian missile attacks. The Russians claim they destroyed a warehouse of US weapons. But neither the regional administration nor Washington confirm the information.
After the rocket attack on the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, there are doubts about the Russian version of the results of the attack. The Defense Ministry in Moscow claimed that a logistics center with weapons from the US and the EU had been destroyed. However, the Pentagon said the US had no information that one of the consignments of military aid sent to Ukraine had been hit by Russian attacks.
At least seven people were killed in the rocket attacks on Lviv on Monday. For the city in western Ukraine, which is only 70 kilometers from the Polish border, these are the first known deaths related to the war. Scores of other civilians were injured, including a child, according to the city’s mayor. Among other things, civilian buildings such as a tire service and a hotel were hit. According to the regional governor Maxym Kosyzkyj, three of the four rockets hit military objects. However, according to the regional military administration, the projectiles hit storage facilities that are currently not in use.
The Kremlin, on the other hand, spoke of a destroyed logistics center with weapons from the West. “On the morning of April 18, high-precision missiles from the Russian Air Force hit the 124th joint logistics center of the Logistics Command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces near Lviv,” Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Monday. “The logistics center and large quantities of foreign arms that had entered Ukraine from the United States and European countries over the past six days were destroyed,” it said. The Russian military received information about the targets through intelligence channels, the Defense Ministry wrote on Telegram.
“Continuation of terror campaign against the people of Ukraine”
The US Department of Defense did not confirm Konashenkov’s words. “At this time, we have no indication that Western aid supplies have been targeted and/or hit or destroyed,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said at a briefing in Washington. However, he pointed out that the Pentagon had not yet had the opportunity to assess the damage. The US State Department described the attacks on Lviv as a continuation of the “terror campaign, despicable aggression against the people of Ukraine”.
Since the Russian war of aggression began in late February, the US government has already shipped arms worth $2.5 billion to Ukraine. On Wednesday last week, the White House announced new military aid worth 800 million dollars (around 737 million euros), and the deliveries arrived in Ukraine on Sunday.