Baby among dead in blitz on Odessa
Horrifying missile strikes on homes of civilians kill eight in vital Black Sea port
A THREE-MONTH-OLD baby was among at least eight civilians killed yesterday in a devastating Russian missile attack on residential apartment blocks in the Ukrainian city of Odessa.
The missile strikes gutted nearby apartment blocks, sending civilians running for their lives in the strategic port city that has been a safe hub for refugees fleeing fighting in eastern areas.
As smoke billowed from the buildings last night and firefighters clambered through the wreckage in search of survivors, the Russian defence ministry denied targeting civilians and claimed it had ‘disabled a logistics terminal at a military airfield’.
But Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said the assault – as Orthodox Christians celebrated Easter – had killed civilians.
‘Among those killed was a threemonth-old baby,’ Mr Yermak said. ‘A child who was set to celebrate his first Easter with his parents.’
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said: ‘The only aim of Russian missile strikes on Odessa is terror. Russia must be designated a state sponsor of terrorism and treated accordingly. We need a wall between civilisation and barbarians striking peaceful cities with missiles.’
Thousands of Ukrainians had fled to Odessa since the start of the war and there had previously been only a handful of attacks on the city.
In recent days, the local authorities had even begun dismantling anti-tank barriers and some checkpoints in the city centre after the
‘They are barbarians striking peaceful cities’
Ukrainian military foiled a series of Russian strikes.
Yesterday’s brutal assault, however, brought fresh fears that Vladimir Putin intends to seize all of southern Ukraine.
One man at the scene said he had been in his parents’ flat on the 12th floor of the 14-storey building when there was an explosion and all the windows shattered. To leave, the family had to push aside the fragments of a door and climb down before jumping to safety from the first floor. Anna Vishenka, a 38-yearold dentist from Odessa, described how she had been on a bus – and therefore could not reach a shelter – when the bombing began.
‘A child on the bus was crying and telling his mother that if we die, he will always love her,’ she said. ‘It is difficult to comprehend the horror of everything that is happening.
‘You feel fear not for yourself or your life, but for your relatives, because you don’t know where the next blow may be.’ Samuel Ramani, a Russian expert at Oxford University, warned Putin would ‘intensify attacks’ on Odessa, a major export hub. ‘Gaining control of Odessa helps landlock Ukraine and grants Russia complete hegemony over its Black Sea coast,’ he said.
Two of Putin’s stooges warned yesterday that Moscow’s forces would look to make further territorial gains inside the country. Russian MP Leonid Babashov said Russia will aim to place the Ukrainian cities of Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv and Odessa under its ‘protection’, while Mikhail Sheremet, a member of Putin’s United Russia Party, claimed the Crimea and southern Ukraine would be united into a single ‘federal district’ of Russia.
It came a day after one of Putin’s top generals, Rustam Minnekayev, revealed plans to annex Ukraine’s coastline and hinted at future military action in Moldova to protect ‘oppressed’ Russian speakers in the enclave of Transnistria, which has been effectively controlled by Moscow since 1992.
Meanwhile, Russian forces continued to pound eastern areas of Ukraine. Two civilians were killed and two others were wounded in an artillery strike in the frontline town of Zolote in the Luhansk region. A missile also exploded in an abandoned village near Dnipro.
But the Ukrainian military claimed to have killed two more Russian generals in the south-eastern Kherson region. A third general was said to have been seriously
If confirmed, it means Russia has lost nine generals since Putin launched his invasion on February 24. Western experts said more Russian generals had been killed in action in Ukraine than in any other conflict since the Second World War.
A briefing from the Ministry of Defence yesterday said: ‘Despite increased activity, Russian forces have made no major gains in the last 24 hours as Ukrainian counterattacks hinder their efforts. Russian air and maritime forces have not established control in either domain owing to the effectiveness of Ukraine’s air and sea defence.’
Last night, Mr Zelensky said he believed Putin could deploy nuclear weapons. But the president – who is expected to welcome US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Kyiv today in what will be the first visit by a US official to Ukraine since the war began – said he did not think Russia would use them.