RUSSIA – A Russian ballistic missile strike on port infrastructure in Ukraine’s Odesa port in the south has killed at least eight people and wounded 27, as Moscow intensifies attacks on the strategic Black Sea region and talks to end the war remain in a critical stage.
The attack on Friday hit critical logistics infrastructure, with some of the wounded trapped on a bus at the strike’s epicenter as trucks caught fire in a car park. Ukrainian officials say the bombardment is part of a sustained Russian campaign against Odesa’s civilian infrastructure that has left more than two million people without electricity, water and heating for days amid freezing temperatures in the war’s fourth punishing winter.
Moscow struck the same port again on Saturday, hitting reservoirs in what Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba described as deliberately targeting civilian logistics routes. The escalation comes as both sides trade blows across multiple fronts, while United States-led negotiations and numerous high-level meetings in Europe to end the war lumber on without a breakthrough.
Russia claimed on Saturday to have seized the villages of Svitle in the eastern Donetsk region and Vysoke in the northeastern Sumy region, though the reports could not be independently verified. Ukraine has responded with a widening campaign against Russian military and energy assets.
On Friday night, Ukrainian drones struck the Filanovsky oil rig belonging to Russian energy giant Lukoil in the Caspian Sea, along with a military patrol ship patrolling near the platform. The attack marked the first officially acknowledged Ukrainian strike on Caspian drilling infrastructure, though the rig had been hit at least twice before in December.
Between December 14 and 15, Ukrainian forces used sea drones to strike a Russian Kilo-class submarine at the Novorossiysk Naval Base in the Black Sea, according to a United Kingdom Defence Intelligence assessment. (Aljazeera)
