Russian jets pummel Odesa port targeting supply lines
100 still trapped at Azovstal steel mill; bodies of 44 civilians found in rubble of Izyum building; Putin may impose martial law in Russia: US
Russia pummeled the vital port of Odesa, Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday, an apparent effort to disrupt supply lines and Western weapons shipments critical to Kyiv’s defense.
With the war now in its 11th week and Kyiv bogging down Russian forces and even staging a counteroffensive, Ukraine’s foreign minister appeared to suggest the country could expand its aims beyond merely pushing Russia back to areas it or its allies held on the day of the Feb.24 invasion.
The regiment defending the plant said Russian warplanes continued bombarding it.
In recent days, the United Nations (UN) and Red Cross organised a rescue of what some officials said were the last civilians trapped at the plant.
But two officials said on Tuesday about 100 were believed to still be in the complex’s underground tunnels.
Others said that was impossible to confirm. In another example of the grisly toll the war continues to take, the Ukrainians said they found the bodies of 44 civilians in the rubble of a building destroyed weeks ago in the northeastern city of Izyum.
Ukraine said Russian forces fired seven missiles on Monday at Odesa, hiting a shopping centre and a warehouse in the country’s largest port. One person was killed and five wounded, the military said.
In Mariupol, Russians also bombarded the Azovstal steel mill, the Azov regiment said, targeting the sprawling complex 34 times in the past 24 hours. Atempts to storm the plant also continued, it said.
Meanwhile, Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to Mariupol’s mayor, estimated on social media that at least 100 civilians are trapped in the plant. Donetsk regional Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said those who remain are people “that the Russians have not selected” for evacuation.
President Vladimir Putin is expected to become more unpredictable and could order martial law in Russia to support his ambitions in Ukraine, US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said on Tuesday.
Putin’s aims are greater than Russian military capabilities, and that “likely means the next few months could see us moving along a more unpredictable and potentially escalatory trajectory,” Haines told a Senate hearing.
Haines also said Putin is not likely to order the use of nuclear weapons unless the Russian homeland faces an “existential threat.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Malta on Tuesday to stop Russians from abusing passports handed out as part of a lucrative citizenship scheme, and to prevent its ships from transporting Russian oil.
In his latest video address to a Western parliament, Zelensky likened Ukraine’s fight with Russia to Malta’s own dogged defence against Nazi Germany in World War II.