The Ukrainian port city of Odessa was targeted in a Russian airborne attack overnight killing four civilians and injuring 10 after an apartment building was struck and destroyed. File photo by Igor Tkachenko/EPA-EFE
Russian forces struck the Ukrainian port city of Odessa with ballistic missiles overnight for the second straight day, killing four people, including a 16-year-old girl, and injuring at least 10 other civilians, local officials said Friday.
State Emergency Service workers pulled the bodies of the girl, a 43-year-old woman and a 22-year-old man from beneath a two-story residential-commercial building after it was razed in a direct hit by a missile, Odessa Gov. Oleh Kiper reported on social media. Advertisement
A fourth person, a woman, died of her injuries in the hospital. Nine others were hospitalized, four of them in a serious condition.
Kiper, who expressed his sincere condolences to the families of the victims, said law enforcement agencies were “documenting the consequences of yet another crime committed by the Russians against the civilian population of Odessa.”
Friday’s attack came the day after eight Ukrainians were killed and 11 injured in an aerial attack on the city’s port in which a civilian container ship was hit amid a major drone and missile assault by Russian forces targeting half of the country’s 24 provinces. Advertisement
The Panamanian-registered Shui Spirit was the third commercial vessel struck in four days in the port prompting officials in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government to accuse Moscow of trying to disrupt Ukraine’s all-important grain exports to the rest of the world.
Ukraine, one of the world’s largest grain producers, opened up a maritime corridor for ships exiting its Black Sea ports in summer 2023 via which it has been able to continue exporting despite Russia withdrawing from a deal guaranteeing safe passage of Ukrainian and Russian agricultural products.
The 12-month Turkey-brokered deal under which Moscow and Kyiv agreed not to attack each other’s grain and fertilizer ships in a bid to ease global grain shortages triggered by Russia’s full-scale Ukraine invasion in February 2022, collapsed after Russia refused to renew it.
The latest attacks came as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy arrived in Kyiv on their first-ever joint visit where Lammy announced at least $784 million of aid and loan guarantees for Ukraine.
That was in addition to a pledge from Defense Secretary John Healey, who was not traveling with Lammy and Blinken, to deliver before year-end “hundreds of additional air defense missiles, tens of thousands of additional artillery ammunition rounds, and more armored vehicles.” Advertisement
Meanwhile, Zelensky was in Paris on a tour of European capitals aimed at selling his “victory plan” in exchange for more military support that saw French President Emmanuel Macron roll out the red carpet — but no new aid pledges.
Zelensky arrived in Paris from London where Prime Minister Keir Starmer warmly welcomed him in front of No. 10 Downing Street, shaking hands and embracing him, and Zelensky thanked the British people for their support right from the outset and the strength that had given to Ukraine.
Starmer said the visit was an important opportunity for his new administration to make clear its “unshakable” support for Ukraine going forward and “to go through the [victory] plan and to talk in more detail.”
Zelensky’s victory plan calls for a weapons and ammunition surge, increased international diplomatic pressure on Moscow, ending a prohibition on using Western-supplied long-range missiles to strike military targets inside Russian territory and formalizing a defined path for NATO accession.
