Russia sets Odesa ablaze in overnight air strikes on Ukraine

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Russian air strikes caused a series of explosions and fires in the Black Sea port city of Odesa, marking the latest bombardment in a weeks-long campaign aimed at choking Ukraine’s grain exports to global markets.

“At night, Russian terrorists attacked Odesa with three waves of attacks: two waves of attack drones, a total of 15 drones, and eight Kalibr missiles,” Oleg Kiper, the region’s governor, said on Monday. Debris caused by the “downing of the missiles”, which were all successfully intercepted, damaged three buildings, he added.

Posting a video of a damaged supermarket on Twitter, Andriy Yermak, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, wrote: “Russians are insane terrorists.” No fatalities were reported.

The foreign ministry on Monday condemned a “provocative” action by a Russian warship that fired warning shots at a cargo vessel, as Moscow moved to reinforce a naval blockade of Ukrainian ports.

Zelenskyy, in his overnight video address, also slammed Russia for indiscriminate shelling of villages in the southern Kherson region on Sunday. Seven people including a family of four with a 22-day-old baby were killed.

“We will not leave any crime of Russia unanswered,” he said. “Our soldiers have the opportunity to restore justice to Ukraine . . . along the entire length of the front from the Kharkiv region to Kherson,” he added.

His comments refer to Kyiv’s counteroffensive along a more than 1,000km frontline — stretching from the northeastern Kharkiv to the southern region of Kherson — which has struggled to make significant territorial gains since it was launched in June.

Hanna Maliar, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, said on Monday that government troops had “certain successes” in its aim to liberate Urozhayne, a village in the south of the eastern Donetsk region. Some 18 per cent of Ukrainian territory is still occupied by Russia.

Ukraine’s push in Donetsk and southern parts of the adjacent Zaporizhzhia region is an attempt to sever Russia’s land bridge along the Azov Sea coastline to Crimea. Russia has used the peninsula, which it occupied and illegally annexed in 2014, as a military staging ground for its full-scale invasion launched in February 2022.

Monday’s strikes on Odesa came a day after a Russia warship moved to reinforce a naval blockade of Ukrainian ports by firing warning shots and conducting a forced inspection of a Palau-flagged Turkish cargo vessel. It was heading to the river port of Izmail, the Ukrainian port located on the Danube delta that borders Romania.

Under an EU solidarity agreement, Kyiv has been encouraged to increase grain exports via the Danube, but this and other road and rail routes incur higher transit costs than shipments via the Black Sea.

It marked the first time Russia acted on its threat to treat commercial vessels heading to Ukraine’s ports as military targets and challenges the Black Sea maritime rights of two Nato military alliance members — Turkey and Romania.

“Russia should not be able to block international routes in the Black Sea, particularly those leading to Ukrainian seaports,” the foreign ministry said on Monday. “Ukraine urges its partners to strengthen their efforts to preserve the functioning of the grain initiative, which is crucial to ensuring global food security.”

Ukraine last week unilaterally announced a reopening of maritime shipping corridors following Moscow’s decision earlier this summer to withdraw from the Black Sea Grain Initiative, brokered last year by the UN and Turkey. The agreement allowed safe passage of vessels carrying foodstuffs.