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By Ellie Cook
Senior Defense Reporter
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NATO nation Poland scrambled several aircraft early Tuesday as at least four people were killed in Russian overnight attacks on neighboring Ukraine.
Poland's military said a pair of fighter jets and an early warning aircraft, which detect faraway threats with powerful sensors, took off from its bases after detecting long-range Russian airstrikes on Ukraine.
Poland frequently scrambles military aircraft when Moscow launches missile and drone attacks on Ukraine. NATO deploys rotations of additional fighter jets to protect Polish airspace since around 20 Russian drones crossed into the country in September.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said four people had been killed in Russian overnight attacks on 11 Ukrainian regions and dozens more injured.
At least two people were killed in the central Ukrainian Poltava region and one person was killed in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, local officials said on Tuesday. Regional authorities in the southern Kherson region later said on Tuesday a man had been killed after fresh artillery shelling destroyed a residential home.
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Poland's operational command said it had put its ground-based air defense systems, which would help intercept any incoming attacks, and its radar systems on the "highest level of alert."
"These actions are of a preventive nature and are aimed at securing the airspace and its protection, particularly in areas adjacent to the threatened regions," Warsaw's armed forces said.
As part of NATO's founding treaty, its members are collectively obliged to treat attacks on any member country as an assault on the whole alliance. It's meant to deter any adversary nations from attacking a part of NATO because it would have to face a response from the alliance's 32 members.
Russian drones and missiles entering NATO airspace have not been treated as attacks on the alliance so far.
Russia fired nearly 400 attack drones and launched 34 missiles, including difficult-to-intercept ballistic weapons, Zelensky said.
Ukrainian air defenses intercepted 25 missiles, including five Iskander-K cruise missiles, and 365 drones, Kyiv's air force said in a statement.
Six missiles and 27 drones struck 22 locations across Ukraine, while debris from destroyed drones landed at 10 locations, the air force said.
The military said it was still working to determine the damage caused by three of Russia's missiles.
Images from Zaporizhzhia show emergency services battling a blaze in a high-rise apartment building. Ukraine's state emergency service said residential buildings, a hotel and industrial facilities were damaged in Poltava.
Russia's defense ministry had not commented on the strikes at the time of writing, but said it had intercepted 55 Ukrainian drones over seven Russian regions, including Moscow, as well as over the Black Sea and Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
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