Ukraine’s Odesa region, Dnipro attacked
New Russian strikes come after Poland missile blast is deemed unintentional
KYIV: Russian strikes hit Ukraine’s southern Odesa region and the city of Dnipro for the first time in weeks on Thursday morning, and air raid sirens sounded all across the East European country amid fears that moscow unleashed another large-scale missile attack.
An infrastructure target was hit on Odesa, Gov. Maksym Marchenko said on Telegram, warning about the threat of a “massive missile barrage on the entire territory of Ukraine.”
Multiple explosions were also reported in Dnipro, where two infrastructure objects were damaged and at least one person was wounded, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office.
Air defense systems were operating in the central Kyiv region, Gov. Oleksiy Kuleba said. The Kyiv city administration said two missiles were shot down over the Ukrainian capital.
Officials in the Poltava, Kharkiv, Khmelnytskyi and Rivne regions urged residents to stay in bomb shelters amid the persisting threat of missile strikes.
Thursday’s blast follows Tuesday’s huge barrage of Russian strikes, the biggest attack to date on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
Russia has increasingly resorted to targeting Ukraine’s power grid as winter approaches as its battlefield losses mount. The most recent barrage followed days of euphoria in Ukraine sparked by one of its biggest military successes: the retaking last week of the southern city of Kherson.
Andriy Yermak, head of Ukraine’s presidential office, called the strikes on energy targets the “naive tactics of cowardly losers” in a Telegram post on Thursday.
“Ukraine has already withstood extremely difficult strikes by the enemy, which did not lead to results the Russian cowards hoped for,” he wrote, urging Ukrainians not to ignore air raid sirens.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced the extension of a July deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey that has allowed his country to export over 11 million metric tons of wheat and Russia to ship its grain and fertilizer to world markets.
Zelenskyy tweeted on Thursday that the deal “will be prolonged for 120 days.” He called it a “key decision in the global fight against the food crisis.”
There was no immediate confirmation of the extension from Russia. Turkish officials also wouldn’t confirm it, saying negotiations for the extension of the grain initiative are continuing and that an announcement would be made when the talks are concluded.
The grain agreement’s apparent extension comes after Western leaders moved to calm fears of a dangerous escalation in the war, saying a missile blast in Poland on Tuesday was likely an accident, while Kyiv pushed back hard at the idea that its anti-aircraft fire was to blame.
Zelenskyy pointed the finger at Russia, but the United States, like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), firmly supported Poland’s assessment that the deadly missile was probably fired by Ukraine.
The missile killed two people when it struck the village of Przewodow, near the Ukrainian border on Tuesday, shocking NATO member Poland.
Both Warsaw and NATO have said the explosion was likely caused by a Ukrainian air defense missile launched to intercept a massive Russian barrage targeting civilian infrastructure, while stressing that Moscow was ultimately to blame for starting the conflict.
The White House said it had “seen nothing that contradicts” Poland’s preliminary assessment while also declaring that “the party ultimately responsible for this tragic incident is Russia.”
Zelenskyy, however, said Kyiv had seen no proof that the missile was Ukrainian, demanding to be part of any investigation and asking for access to the blast site, as well as “all the data” on the projectile.
In the immediate aftermath, the explosion sparked fears of a major escalation in the war in Ukraine, with Hungary criticizing Zelenskyy’s denial as setting “a bad example.”