A deadly Russian missile strike on the Ukrainian port city of Odesa appeared to land near President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and visiting Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who described the moment of the bombardment as “intense”.
The attack on port infrastructure on Wednesday killed five people and left an unspecified number of wounded, according to Ukraine’s navy.
“We heard the sound of sirens and explosions that took place near us,” said Mitsotakis, who was holding talks with Zelenskiy. “We did not have time to get to a shelter. It is a very intense experience,” Mitsotakis added, through an interpreter in Odesa.
Ukraine stepped up its own attacks behind Russian lines with the apparent killing of a Russian election official on Wednesday with a car bomb and a drone assault on a metal plant.
Russia and Ukraine have increased aerial attacks as Moscow’s troops advance on the frontlines and Kyiv faces a shortage of manpower and weapons.
Spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk confirmed that the Odesa strike came as the Greek delegation was visiting the port with Zelenskiy.
Russian forces “don’t care whether [targets] are military or civilians; whoever they are, whether they are international guests, these people don’t care,” Zelenskiy said.
According to the White House spokesperson in Washington, “It appears that [the rocket] landed near the convoy.”
But the Russian defence ministry claimed that the strike was on a “hangar in a commercial port area of Odesa in which crewless cutters were being prepared for combat use by the Ukrainian armed forces”.
The attack came just days after 12 people, including five children, were killed when a Russian drone hit a residential block in the same Black Sea city, one of the deadliest attacks on civilians in weeks.
As the White House struggles to end Republican stonewalling on new US aid packages to Ukraine, a spokesperson for President Joe Biden’s national security council said the Odesa attack showed the “urgent need” for weapons. “This strike is yet another reminder of how Russia is continuing to attack Ukraine recklessly every single day,” they said.
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Authorities in the Russian-occupied city of Berdiansk in southern Ukraine blamed Kyiv for a car bombing that it said killed a local election official. “A homemade explosive device was planted under the vehicle of a member of the precinct election commission,” the Investigative Committee said in a statement.
“The victim died from her injuries,” it added, publishing a video of a blown-out small beige car parked on a dirt track.
The attack came as early voting got under way across occupied Ukraine for this month’s Russian presidential election.
The Moscow-installed head of the Zaporizhzhia region, Yevgeny Balitsky, blamed Ukrainian authorities for the attack and said they were trying to “intimidate” residents ahead of the ballot.
A number of Russian-installed officials have been targeted since Moscow launched its full-scale military operation in Ukraine two years ago. Russia also said Ukraine hit a fuel tank at a metals plant in the Russia’s Kursk region in an early-morning drone strike.
