(LONDON) — NATO fighter jets were scrambled and ground-based air defense systems put on the highest level of alert in Poland and Romania during a massive and deadly overnight Russian attack on targets across Ukraine, military officials in Warsaw and Bucharest said.
One drone was reported penetrating some 5 miles into Romanian airspace before being lost on radar, the Defense Ministry in Bucharest said in a statement.
At least 20 people were killed in a Russian strike on the western city of Ternopil, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said, where two nine-story residential buildings were hit by Russian munitions. Another 66 people were injured, the ministry said.
“One is on fire, the other has destruction from the third to the ninth floor,” the ministry said of the buildings hit. “About five hundred rescuers and over a hundred units of equipment are working at nine active locations,” the ministry added.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 476 drones and 48 missiles into the country overnight, with Lviv, Ternopil and Kharkiv regions the focus of the attack. The attack was the largest of November to date, according to air force data, and the largest since Russia launched 705 munitions into the country on Oct. 30.
Defenders downed or suppressed 442 drones and 41 missiles, the air force said. Impacts of 34 drones and seven missiles were reported across 14 locations, it added, with falling debris reported in six locations.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said attacks were reported all across the country, in regions including Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Cherkasy, Chernihiv and Dnipro.
At least 19 long-range drones attacked the northeastern city of Kharkiv, where local officials said nearly 50 people were injured.
“Every brazen attack against normal life indicates that the pressure on Russia is insufficient,” Zelenskyy wrote in a post to Telegram. “Russia must be held accountable for its actions, and we must focus on everything that strengthens us and allows us to shoot down Russian missiles, neutralize Russian drones and stop assaults.”
In Romania, the Defense Ministry said two German Eurofighters and two Romanian F-16s were deployed “to monitor the airspace at the border with Ukraine, following Russian airstrikes in the vicinity of the river border with Romania.”
One drone was tracked on radar penetrating some 5 miles into Romanian airspace, the ministry said. The drone reappeared on radar intermittently as it traveled along the Moldovan-Romanian border before being lost, the ministry said.
“No cases of impact with the ground of any aerial vehicle have been reported,” it said in a statement. “Teams of specialists are ready to begin field searches.”
A Romanian Defense Ministry spokesperson told ABC News they could not confirm whether the drone was Russian in origin.
In Poland, the Armed Forces Operational Command said fighters were scrambled and air defenses “reached a state of maximum readiness” during the attack.
The alert lasted for around four hours, the command said, with no reported violations of Polish airspace. Polish, Dutch, Norwegian and Spanish fighters were involved in the allied response, it added in a later post, as were German Patriot air defense systems.
Russia’s Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said its forces downed 80 Ukrainian drones overnight into Wednesday morning.
The latest exchanges came as U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George visited Ukraine to meet with Zelenskyy and other top officials.
The White House’s peace push has stalled in recent months. A U.S. official told ABC News that this week’s visit is intended to revive talks and discuss the U.S. position on the possibility of negotiations with Moscow.
Ahead of the trip to Ukraine, Driscoll held discussions with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and presidential envoy Steve Witkoff.
U.S. Army spokesperson Col. Dave Butler told ABC News on Wednesday that Driscoll and the accompanying team “arrived this morning in Kyiv on behalf of the administration on a fact finding mission to meet with Ukrainian officials and discuss efforts to end the war.”
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