Russia pummels vital port of Odesa
ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — Russia pummeled the vital port of Odesa, Ukrainian officials said Tuesday, an apparent effort to disrupt supply lines and Western weapons shipments critical to Kyiv's defense.
Ukraine's ability to stymie a larger, better-armed Russian military has surprised many who had anticipated a much quicker end to the conflict. With the war now in its 11th week and Kyiv bogging down Russian forces 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 prevent easy victories is in 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 Russian warplanes continued bombarding it.
In recent days, the United Nations and Red Cross organized a rescue of what some officials said were the last civilians trapped at the plant. But two officials said Tuesday about 100 were believed to still be in the complex's underground tunnels. Others said that was impossible to confirm.
In another 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.
In Washington, a top U.S. intelligence official testified Tuesday that eight to 10 Russian generals have been killed so far in the war. Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, who leads the Defense Intelligence Agency, told a Senate committee that because Russia lacks a noncommissioned officer corps, its generals have to go into combat zones and end up in dangerous positions.
Ukraine said Russian forces fired seven missiles Monday at Odesa, hitting a shopping center and a warehouse in the country's largest port. 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."