What the missile strike on Lviv Oblast showed on 9 March 2023
A look back at a day of cruise missile attacks across Ukraine, set against the grinding fight for Bakhmut days earlier.
What did the war look like on 9 March 2023? It looked like a country under fire far from the front line, while the fight in the east ground on.
On that date, Russia launched cruise missiles at targets across Ukraine. Buildings and critical infrastructure were damaged. In Lviv Oblast, a missile destroyed a home and killed at least five civilians, according to the region's governor, Maksym Kozytskyy. The strike was part of the wider Russian campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure that ran through 2022 and 2023.
The front in the east
Five days earlier, on 4 March 2023, the battle for Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast was in its street-fighting phase. Russian and Ukrainian troops were fighting heavily in the city. Its deputy mayor, Oleksandr Marchenko, said that not a single building had remained untouched and that the city was almost destroyed.
The same day, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu was filmed inspecting troops in what was described as the eastern military district in the south Donetsk direction, a rare high-level visit to the Donbas.
Two kinds of pressure
Taken together, these reports show the pressure Ukraine faced in early March 2023: ground combat that had left a city in ruins, and missile attacks that reached a western region and killed civilians in their home.
