Yesterday morning, Russia hit the Ukrainian port of Odessa, where there are important infrastructures for the export of cereals, with at least 19 drones and more than a dozen missiles. In the opposite direction, Ukraine again attacked the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014, and two Russian regions. Moscow says it shot down eight drones before they hit the target.
Anti-aircraft alarms were activated in most regions of Ukraine during the night from Sunday to Monday. But the one in Odessa, in the south of the country, was the most punished. Its air defenses managed to shoot down all the Iranian-made Shahed drones launched against this area. According to Kyiv, the region was also attacked with 14 missiles, including two hypersonic ones. Its air defenses were able to shoot down 11 Kalibr cruise missiles.
The Russian night attacks on this region caused two deaths, two workers in a grain warehouse, explained the governor of the region, Oleh Kiper. He also pointed out that the attacked facilities had almost a thousand tons of grain stored.
The attacks in recent months against this region and its Ukrainian ports have been watched with particular attention since in mid-July Russia terminated the so-called grain agreement, in which for a year it was engaged with Turkey and the UN to allow the exit of Ukrainian grain through three Black Sea ports in the Odessa region. Moscow considers that neither the UN nor the Western countries comply with the agreement to facilitate Russian exports.
To compensate, Kyiv is trying to increase grain transport along the Danube River, by road and by rail, and has established a so-called “humanitarian corridor” along the Black Sea coast to send grain to African and Asian markets. The first two grain ships to use the corridor left Chornomorsk port last week.
According to the Ukrainian army, the attack “set fire to the port hotel”, which is called “Odessa” and had been closed for years. One woman was injured by the blast wave and had to be hospitalized, Kiper said. The marine passenger terminal was also seriously damaged.
Anti-aircraft systems were also activated at night in Russia. Moscow claimed yesterday that it had shot down four Ukrainian drones that were attacking the Crimean peninsula. The Russian Ministry of Defense also added that it had managed to intercept four other drones aimed at targets in the Kursk and Briansk oblasts, Russian regions bordering Ukraine.
Roman Starovoit, the governor of Kursk, said the wreckage of one of the drones had caused damage to private houses and the roof of an administrative building. The expansive wave broke the windows of an apartment building. Both Starovoit and his counterpart in Briansk, Aleksandr Bogomaz, assured that the attacks had resulted in no casualties.
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said the attack on the port of Odessa was a “pathetic attempt” to retaliate for Kyiv’s attack on the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet on Friday.
The Ukrainian Special Operations Forces said yesterday that in this attack on the historic building of the port of Sevastopol, in Crimea, 34 Russian military personnel were killed, including the commander of the fleet, Viktor Sokolov. Moscow, however, is silent on this matter. On Friday, he acknowledged the disappearance of a single soldier.
