Error: vite.new/react starter template

Unable to spin up a new vite react-js project using the starter template.
Fails on auto-launch while executing npm run dev

failed to load config from /home/projects/vitejs-vite-1wvvebnm/vite.config.js
error when starting dev server:
Error: Build failed with 3 errors:
(define name):1:0: ERROR: Expected identifier but found "import"
(define name):1:0: ERROR: Expected identifier but found "import"
(define name):1:0: ERROR: Expected identifier but found "import"
    at failureErrorWithLog (/home/projects/vitejs-vite-1wvvebnm/node_modules/esbuild/lib/main.js:1466:15)
    at eval (/home/projects/vitejs-vite-1wvvebnm/node_modules/esbuild/lib/main.js:935:25)
    at runOnEndCallbacks (/home/projects/vitejs-vite-1wvvebnm/node_modules/esbuild/lib/main.js:1306:45)
    at buildResponseToResult (/home/projects/vitejs-vite-1wvvebnm/node_modules/esbuild/lib/main.js:933:7)
    at eval (/home/projects/vitejs-vite-1wvvebnm/node_modules/esbuild/lib/main.js:960:16)
    at responseCallbacks.<computed> (/home/projects/vitejs-vite-1wvvebnm/node_modules/esbuild/lib/main.js:612:9)
    at handleIncomingPacket (/home/projects/vitejs-vite-1wvvebnm/node_modules/esbuild/lib/main.js:667:12)
    at Socket.readFromStdout (/home/projects/vitejs-vite-1wvvebnm/node_modules/esbuild/lib/main.js:590:7)
    at Socket.emit (node:events:30:10899)
    at addChunk (node:internal/streams/readable:225:3685)

Start with the vite.new/react starter template and reproduce the failure by running npm run dev. Inspect the referenced vite.config.js and the reported esbuild error; done means the template launches its development server without the import parsing errors.