Odessa missile horror
At least eight civilians — including a 3-monthold — were killed Saturday after Russian forces fired cruise missiles at Odessa, Ukraine’s largest Black Sea port.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky decried Russia’s latest attack on civilians.
“When the war began, this child was a month old,” Zelensky told reporters during a Saturday press conference. “What is going on? Stinky bastards.”
The missiles slammed into residential buildings, said Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s chief of staf, who added that more deaths are likely.
“Nothing is sacred,” Yermak wrote on Telegram of the attack, which came during the Eastern Orthodox observation of Holy Saturday. “The evil will be punished.”
The BBC posted video of thick black smoke billowing from a 14-story apartment building after the strike as rescue workers tended to residents with head wounds.
One resident told reporters that he and his elderly mother were forced to leap out of a second-floor window to escape.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba condemned the attack on a city that had, until Saturday, escaped the worst of Russia’s continuing assault on Ukraine.
“The only aim of Russian missile strikes on Odessa is terror,” Kuleba tweeted. “Russia must be designated a state sponsor of terrorism . . . We need a wall between civilization and barbarians striking peaceful cities with missiles.”
‘Intended’ target
Russia’s Ministry of Defense confirmed that it conducted airstrikes in the Odessa area, but claimed that a logistics base at a nearby Ukrainian military airfield was the intended target.
The strike on the crucial port city gave credence to Zelensky’s warning that Russian President Vladimir Putin had set his sights on Moldova, the Soviet breakaway state just to Odessa’s west.
“We are the first in line. And who will come next?” Zelensky said Friday in his nightly address.