“But I think that all normal and rational people will look and say: Odesa was not afraid, is not afraid and will not be afraid, we will work.”
Most of Ukraine was under intermittent airstrike alerts starting at midnight Wednesday, and Russia struck other locations, including a drone strike on kyiv.
“A difficult night of air strikes for the whole of Ukraine, especially in the south, in Odessa,” Serhiy Popko, head of the Kiev city military administration, said on the Telegram channel.
He said that kyiv was attacked and, according to preliminary information, there was some damage or casualties.
Ukraine’s air force said it had shot down 37 of 63 targets in the southern Odessa region, including 23 suicide drones and 14 cruise missiles targeting critical infrastructure and military installations. It was a much lower success rate than Ukraine usually reports in countering Russian airstrikes.
There was no immediate comment from Russia.
On Tuesday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said it had attacked military targets in two Ukrainian port cities overnight as “a massive revenge attack” for the Crimean Bridge attack.
In Crimea, annexed by Moscow from Ukraine in 2014, a fire broke out at a military training ground in Kirovske district, forcing the evacuation of more than 2,000 people from four settlements, the Russian-installed governor of Crimea said. .
Sergei Aksyonov did not give a reason for the fire.
Telegram channels linked to Russian security services and Ukrainian media said an ammunition depot was on fire at the base after a nighttime Ukrainian airstrike.
Odessa military administration spokesman Bratchuk posted two videos of a fire in an uninhabited area, saying: “Enemy ammunition depot. Staryi Krym.
Staryi Krym is a small town in the Kirovske district of Crimea.
At the United Nations on Tuesday, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said there were “a number of ideas being floated” to help get grain and fertilizer from Ukraine and Russia to world markets. Moscow’s decision raised concerns mainly in Africa and Asia over rising food prices and hunger.
The Black Sea deal was brokered by the UN and Turkey in July last year to combat a global food crisis worsened by Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine and its blockade of Ukrainian ports. The two countries are among the world’s leading cereal exporters.
On Ukraine’s side, “we are fighting for global security and for our Ukrainian farmer” and working on options to keep commitments on food supplies, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his late-night video address on Tuesday.
Moscow has rejected Ukraine’s calls to allow shipments to resume without Russian involvement, and the Kremlin has said openly that ships entering the area without its guarantees would be in danger.
“We are talking about an area that is close to a war zone,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “Without adequate security guarantees, there are certain risks that arise. So if something is formalized without Russia, these risks have to be taken into account.”
Russia says it could return to the grain deal, but only if its demands for loosening rules for its own food and fertilizer exports are met. Western countries call that an attempt to use leverage on food supplies to force a loosening of financial sanctions, which already allow Russia to sell food.
