Russia pounds western Ukrainian city of Lviv killing seven people and injuring dozens more

A Russian air attack has killed at least seven people including a 14-year-old girl close to the Polish border in Ukraine.

Strikes pounded the western city of Lviv injuring more than 30 people and destroying historic buildings in the city’s historic centre, regional officials said on Wednesday.

The strikes came a day after the war's deadliest single attack this year, when Russia hit a military institute in the central town of Poltava with two ballistic missiles, killing 50 people and wounding hundreds more.

A police officer and emergency workers carry an injured person rescued from a residential building damaged in Lviv (REUTERS)

The drone and missile attack in Lviv killed a 14-year-old girl, early details showed, with five children among the injured, the regional governor, Maksym Kozytskyi, said on the Telegram messaging app.

Andriy Sadovyi, the mayor of Lviv city, which is the administrative centre of the wider Lviv region, said the dead included a midwife and a man, while 35 people were receiving medical aid.

In a video posted on Telegram that showed the mayor among the debris of a destroyed building, he said more than 50 structures, from schools to homes and clinics, most of them in the heart of the city, had been damaged.

A Reuters witness in the city also reported damage to buildings.

Neighbouring Poland scrambled aircraft on Wednesday for the third time in eight days to maintain the safety of its airspace, the armed forces' operational command said.

"This is another very busy night for the entire air defence system in Poland due to ... the long-range aviation of the Russian Federation carrying out strikes," the command said on X.

On Wednesday, Russia also hit Kyiv and several other regions with missiles, but no immediate damage was reported.

Russia has been pounding Ukraine with hundreds of missiles and drones in the past 10 days, in what some Russian military bloggers call Moscow's response to Kyiv's recent incursion in its territory.

Russia has yet to comment on the attacks on Poltava and Wednesday's strikes on Lviv and Kyiv. Moscow has often said its strikes target Ukraine's military, energy and transport infrastructure, not civilians.