Russia pounds vital port of Odesa
ZAPORIZHZHIA (Ukraine): Russian troops pounded the vital port of Odesa, Ukrainian officials said Tuesday, an apparent effort to disrupt the supply lines and Western weapons shipments critical to Kyiv's defence.
Ukraine's ability to stymie a larger, better-armed Russian military has surprised many who had anticipated a much quicker conflict. With the war now in its 11th week and Kyiv bogging Russian forces down 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.
One of the most dramatic examples of Ukraine's ability to deny Moscow easy victories has been Mariupol, where Ukrainian fighters remained holed up at a steel plant, denying Russia's full control of the city. The regiment defending the plant said Tuesday that Russian warplanes continued pounding it.
In recent days, the United Nations and Red Cross organized a dramatic rescue of what some officials said were the last civilians trapped at the plant. But on Tuesday, two officials said about 100 were believed to still be in the complex's underground tunnels. Others said that was impossible to confirm.
In another harrowing 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.
The Ukrainian military said Russian forces fired seven missiles Monday at Ukraine's largest port, Odesa, hitting a shopping center and a warehouse. One person was killed and five wounded, the military said.
Images overnight showed a burning building and debris including a tennis shoe in a heap of destruction in the city on the Black Sea. Mayor Gennady Trukhanov later visited the warehouse and said it had nothing in common with military infrastructure or military objects.
Ukraine alleged at least some of the munitions used dated to the Soviet era, making them unreliable in targeting.