The White House issued a new warning to Russia today after waves of missiles struck at Ukrainian military facilities just fifteen miles from the border with Poland, bringing the fighting ever closer to NATO’s borders. Dozens of people were killed, hundreds were wounded. There was also heavy shelling in northeast of Kiev. Today, Ukraine’s President V.Z. visited his soldiers at this hospital in the capital as Russian forces advanced on the city. And the among those casualties, American journalist R was killed when Russian troops opened fire on his vehicle near Kiev. It’s been eighteen days now since Russian tanks rolled across Ukraine’s border and airstrikes started pummeling cities and civilians.

A war that many fears could spill into other countries has taken a dangerous turn with Russia firing a Ukrainian military base close to the Polish border and the NATO alliance. The sky turned red, witness say when roughly thirty Russian missiles struck the Yavoriv training base in western Ukraine, leaving this smoldering crater. Thirty-five people dead and an escalation of the war now only a few miles from Poland, a key NATO ally. The base was routinely used by US and NATO trainers over the years. Heavy shelling also rained down on Chernihiv in the north and Mykolaiv in the south, where the morgues are now so full, victims are laying out of freezing cold. Among those spared gather here below an abandoned market, their childhood interrupted by an invading army, even though these are Russian speakers the very people P said he wants to protect. If Mykolaiv falls, the next domino is Odessa, the former crown jewel of the Russian Empire, and today Ukraine’s biggest port on the Black Sea.

:::tip pummel

• : POUND, BEAT. 连续击打

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:::tip smolder

• : to burn sluggishly, without flame, and often with much smoke. 闷烧

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:::tip perilous

• : full of or involving peril. 危险的

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