Russia and Ukraine have exchanged air strikes in recent hours. Russian forces launched 19 Iranian-made Shahed drones and 14 missiles, two of them supersonic, against the Odessa region, Kyiv reported. Ukrainian forces again attacked the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014, with four drones that, according to Moscow, were shot down before hitting their target.
Anti-aircraft alarms were activated in much of Ukraine on the night of Sunday into Monday.
But it was the Odessa region, in the south, that was hardest hit. Ukrainian air defenses managed to shoot down all drones and 11 Kalibr cruise missiles. The missiles were launched from various regions of Russia, they said.
Russian night attacks on that region left two dead, according to Ukrainian authorities.
Rescue teams found this Monday the lifeless bodies of two workers from a granary hit last night by a Russian missile, said the head of the region’s military administration, Oleh Kiper.
Earlier, Kiper had reported damage to a silo and a private home. A non-residential high-rise building in the Black Sea coastal city also caught fire.
The fire was quickly eliminated, he explained, and a woman, injured by the blast wave, had to be hospitalized.
Tipíchnaya Odessa, a Telegram channel, published a video with a burning building in the port area, supposedly the “Odessa” hotel, which has been closed for years.
Later, spokeswoman for the Southern operational command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Natalia Humeniuk, said on the Rada television channel that a grain warehouse had been damaged and that the Odessa sea passenger terminal had been practically destroyed. The terminal and the hotel form a single complex. The hotel was in operation between 2001 and 2011.
The attacks in recent months against this region and its Ukrainian ports have been observed with special attention since in mid-July Russia ended the so-called grain agreement, by which it committed for a year to Turkey and the United Nations to allow the exit of Ukrainian grain through three Black Sea ports in the Odessa region.
Anti-aircraft systems were also activated at night in Russia. Moscow claimed this Monday that it had shot down four Ukrainian drones attacking the Crimean peninsula.
The Russian Defense Ministry also added that it had managed to intercept four other drones that were heading against targets in the Kursk and Briansk oblasts, Russian regions bordering Ukraine.
Roman Starovoit, governor of Kursk, said debris from one of the drones had damaged several private houses and the roof of an administrative building. The shock wave broke the windows of an apartment building.
Both Starovoit and his Bryansk counterpart, Alexander Bogomaz, assured that the attacks had caused no casualties.
