The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Odesa is hit as Russians aim to disrupt supplies
Russian troops have been pounding the vital port of Odesa, Ukrainian officials said, apparently as part of efforts to disrupt the supply lines and weapons shipments that have been critical to Kyiv’s defence.
The Ukrainian military said Russian forces fired seven missiles on Monday from the air at Ukraine’s largest port, hitting a shopping centre and a warehouse. One person was killed and five wounded, the military said.
Mayor Gennady Trukhanov 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 back to the Soviet era, making them unreliable in targeting, but the Centre for Defence Strategies, a Ukrainian think tank tracking the war, said Moscow used some precision weapons including Kinzhal hypersonic air-to-surface missiles.
Ukrainian, British and American officials also warned Moscow is rapidly using up its stock of precision weapons and may not be able to quickly build more, raising the risk of more imprecise rockets being used.
Ever since President Vladimir Putin’s forces failed to take Kyiv in the early days of the war, he has said his focus is the country’s eastern industrial heartland of the Donbas – but one general has suggested Moscow’s aims also include cutting Ukraine off from its Black Sea coast in the south.
That would also give it a stretch of territory that would link Russia to the Crimean peninsula, which it seized in 2014, and Transnistria, a pro-Russian breakaway region of Moldova.
Even if it falls short of severing Ukraine from the Black Sea – and it appears to lack the forces to do so – continuing missile strikes on Odesa reflect the city’s importance as a strategic transport hub.
The Russian military has repeatedly targeted the city’s airport and claimed that it has destroyed several batches of western weapons. Odesa is also a major gateway for grain shipments, and Russia’s blockade is already threatening global food supplies.
In Mariupol, Russians also bombarded the Azovstal steel mill, the Azov regiment said, targeting the sprawling complex 34 times over the past 24 hours. Attempts to storm the plant also continued.
Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to the city’s mayor, estimated that at least 100 civilians remained trapped in the plant.
Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said they were people “that the Russians have not selected” for evacuation from a warren of tunnels.
With Russian forces struggling to gain ground in the Donbas, military analysts suggest that hitting Odesa might serve to stoke concern about south-western Ukraine, thus forcing Kyiv to station more forces there.
That would pull them away from the eastern front as its military stages counter-offensives near the city of Kharkiv, aiming to push the Russians back across the border. Kharkiv and the surrounding area has been under sustained Russian attack since the beginning of the war in late February.
But Ukraine’s foreign minister appeared to voice increasing confidence amid the stalled Russian offensive.
“In the first months of the war the victory for us looked like withdrawal of Russian forces to the positions they occupied before February 24 and payment for inflicted damage,” Dmytro Kuleba told the Financial Times.
“Now if we are strong enough on the military front and we win the battle for Donbas, which will be crucial for the following dynamics of the war, of course the victory for us in this war will be the liberation of the rest of our territories.”