A U.S.-maintained no-fly zone over Ukraine would not have made a difference in a Russian attack that reportedly killed dozens of people at a military training center near Ukraine‘s border with NATO neighbor Poland, Pentagon officials said Monday.
On Sunday, a barrage of Russian missiles slammed into the Yavoriv Combat Training Center in western Ukraine, about 15 miles from the border. It marked the closest attack to countries on Ukraine’s western border amid growing pressure on the U.S. and its NATO allies to do more to help Kyiv deal with the invasion.
A senior Defense Department official on Monday said Russia used more than two dozen long-range cruise missiles for the attack, which damaged 10 buildings at the training site.
“They were launched from Russian long-range bombers from Russian airspace,” the Defense Department official said. “A no-fly zone inside of Ukraine would have had no effect on this particular set of strikes.”
Ukraine’s government said 35 people were killed in the attack. The Defense Department official couldn’t confirm those reports or give a detailed analysis of the damage to the training center.
The damaged training center also is the home of a U.S.-sponsored multinational military training center, which had been training and equipping Ukraine’s military forces until the invasion. Task Force Gator, a Florida Army National Guard brigade, was at the center just before Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine Feb. 24.
A number of both Democratic and Republican members of Congress have urged the Biden administration to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine or send Kyiv additional fighter jets to defend their space. The Biden administration killed a plan that would have had Poland transfer its fleet of MiG-29s to Ukraine through a U.S. airbase in Germany.
The Pentagon said the plan would have risked a direct shooting war with Russia. They said Ukraine, which is not a NATO member, still has the majority of its fighter fleet intact and is waging an effective war against Russia using other weapons.
On Monday, almost all of Moscow’s ground campaigns into Ukraine have stalled. Russian forces are facing stiff resistance outside of Kyiv and Kharkiv, the country’s two largest cities, the Defense Department officials said.