Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that Russia may soon send missiles into NATO countries after a military training base 15 miles from the border of Poland was reportedly attacked, killing 35 people.
“If you do not close our sky, it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory. NATO territory. On the homes of citizens of NATO countries,” he said in a presidential address Sunday.
The Biden administration has repeatedly denied Zelesnkyy’s request to close the sky, saying that doing so would lead the U.S. into war with Russia.
“Look, I mean, no-fly zone has a nice air policing sound to it … It is combat. You have to be willing to shoot and to be shot at,” Department of Defense spokesman John Kirby said Sunday in response to the attack on the military base in Yavoriv.
“President Biden has made it clear that U.S. troops are not going to be fighting in Ukraine, and there’s a good reason for that because the United States getting involved in combat in Ukraine right now or over the skies of Ukraine right now leads to war with Russia. And there’s very little that you can see that would make sense for this war to be escalated between two nuclear powers,” he continued.
Good map by @lauracanali2, showing where the now bombed Yavoriv training center is located.
Russia is now attacking targets very far west, near the Gdansk-Constanta axis.
9 people were killed and 57 injured un the attack on Yavoriv. pic.twitter.com/rKbsVezllZ
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) March 13, 2022
American and Canadian military instructors had stayed in the Yavoriv military base before the invasion, training Ukrainian soldiers. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had ordered 160 Florida National Guardsmen to evacuate the facility Feb. 12 amid threats of Russian invasion into Ukraine. The base had been a training facility for Ukrainian forces since the 1990s.
NOVOIAVORISK, UKRAINE – MARCH 13: A man wounded in this morning’s air strikes at a nearby military complex is assisted by medical staff outside Novoiavorivsk District Hospital on March 13, 2022 in Novoiavorivsk, Ukraine. Early this morning, a series of Russian missiles struck the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security at the nearby Yavoriv military complex, killing at least 35 and wounding scores, according to Ukrainian officials. The site is west of Lviv and mere miles from Ukraine’s border with Poland, a NATO member. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
National security adviser Jake Sullivan vowed Sunday that the U.S. will “defend every inch of NATO territory.”
“The president has been clear repeatedly that the United States will work with our allies to defend every inch of NATO territory, and that means every inch. And if there is a military attack on NATO territory, it would cause the invocation of Article Five, and we would bring the full force of the NATO alliance to bear in responding to it,” Sullivan said on CBS.
Zelenskyy also addressed the killing of American journalist Brent Renaud who was allegedly shot by the Russian military in a city outside of Kyiv Sunday while covering the war.
“An American journalist was killed in the Kyiv region today. Brent Renaud. His colleague was wounded. It was a deliberate attack by the Russian military. They knew what they were doing. But not everyone in the West seems to know what they are doing,” he said.