The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
21 dead in missile attack near Odesa
Russian missile attacks on residential areas killed at least 21 people in a Ukrainian town near Odesa yesterday.
The airstrikes pierced the cautious relief expressed a day earlier after Russian forces withdrew from Snake Island in the Black Sea where they could have staged an assault on Ukraine’s biggest port.
Video of the pre-dawn attack showed the charred remains of buildings in the small town of Serhiivka, about 31 miles south west of Odesa.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office said three X-22 missiles fired by Russian bombers struck a block of flats and two campsites.
“A terrorist country is killing our people,” said chief of staff Andriy Yermak.
“In response to defeats on the battlefield, they fight civilians.”
Asked about the strike, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov repeated Moscow’s claim it was not targeting residential areas during the war, now in its fifth month.
The Russian military is trying to strike munitions depots, weapon repair factories and troop training facilities, he said.
Ukraine’s security service said 21 people died, including two children. Another 38, including six children and a pregnant woman, were admitted to hospital.
Most of the victims were in the apartment building, emergency officials said.
The airstrikes followed the withdrawal of Russian forces from Snake Island on Thursday, a move that was expected to potentially ease the threat to Odesa, Ukraine’s biggest port.
The island is on a busy
shipping lane. Russia took control of it in the opening days of the war in the apparent hope of using it as a staging ground for an assault on Odesa.
The Kremlin portrayed the departure of Russian troops from Snake Island as a “goodwill gesture” intended to facilitate shipments of grain and other agricultural products to Africa, the Middle East and other parts of the world.
Ukraine’s military claimed a barrage of its artillery and missiles forced the Russians to flee in two small speedboats. The exact number of withdrawn troops was not disclosed.
Mr Zelensky said that although the withdrawal did not guarantee the Black Sea region’s safety, it would “significantly limit” Russian activities there.
“Step by step, we will push (Russia) out of our sea, our land, our sky,” he said in his nightly address.
In eastern Ukraine, Russian forces kept up their push to encircle the last stronghold of resistance in Luhansk, one of two provinces that make up the Donbas region.
Moscow-backed separatists have controlled much of the region for eight years.
Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai said the Russians were trying to encircle the city of Lysychansk and fighting for control over an oil refinery on the city’s edge.
“The shelling of the city is very intensive,” Mr Haidai said.
Ukraine’s presidential office said a series of Russian strikes in the past 24 hours had also killed civilians in eastern Ukraine – four in the north-eastern Kharkiv region and another four in Donetsk province.