Ukraine: Russian missiles kill 21 near Odesa region
Norway announced $1 billion aid for Ukraine including for reconstruction and weapons
SERGIYVKA, UKRAINE: Russian missiles slammed into a Ukrainian apartment building and a recreation centre early on Friday, killing 21 people and wounding dozens in the Odesa region, in attacks swiftly condemned by Germany.
At least one child was killed, Ukrainian officials said, blaming the strikes on Russia a day after Moscow abandoned positions on a strategic island in a major setback to the Kremlin’s invasion.
The missiles struck the two buildings in the town of Sergiyvka about 80km south of the Black Sea port of Odesa, which has become a strategic flashpoint in the now more than four-month-old war.
“The death toll in Odesa blast rose to 21,” Sergiy Bratchuk, Odesa deputy chief of district, told Ukrainian television. A 12-year-old boy was among the dead, he added.
Ukraine’s emergency services ministry said 16 people were killed at the block of flats and five others, including a child, at the recreation centre. Thirtynine people were taken to hospital. The injured included six children, the ministry added.
‘Inhuman’
Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba urged allies to send Kyiv “modern missile defence systems as soon as possible. Help us save lives and put an end to this war”. “The cruel manner in which the Russian aggressor takes the deaths of civilians in its stride and is again speaking of collateral damages is inhuman and cynical,” said German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit.
On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hailed a “new” chapter of “history” with the European Union, after Brussels recently granted Ukraine candidate status in Kyiv’s push to join the 27-member bloc, even if membership is likely years away.
“Our journey to membership shouldn’t take decades. We should make it down this road quickly,” Zelensky told Ukraine’s parliament. The president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen told Ukrainian lawmakers that membership was “within reach” but urged them to make anticorruption reforms.
Norway, which is not an EU member, on Friday announced $1 billion worth of aid for Kyiv including for reconstruction and weapons.
‘Borshch war’
In a decision that immediately inflamed tensions further between Kyiv and Moscow, the UN’S cultural agency inscribed Ukraine’s tradition of cooking borshch soup on its list of endangered cultural heritage.
Ukraine considers the nourishing soup, usually made with beetroot, as a national dish although it is also widely consumed in Russia, other ex-soviet countries and Poland.
Unesco said the decision was approved after a fast-track process prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Victory in the borshch war is ours... (we) will win both in the war of borshch and in this war,” said Ukraine’s culture minister Oleksandr Tkachenko on Telegram.
On the ground, four people died and three were wounded in shelling in two districts of northeastern Ukraine in the last 24 hours, Kharkiv chief of district Oleg Synegubov said on Telegram.
Ukrainian officials also accused Russian forces of relentlessly shelling the city of Lysychansk in the eastern Donbas region.