The head of Ukraine’s Odesa Region has said that its three ports “are not possible” to fully protect because they span such an extensive area and Russia has intensified their missile attacks.
He spoke to the BBC following the deaths of a 16-year old girl, two women, and a male in a Russian airstrike on a two floor building north-west from Odesa.
This was the fourth attack on the Black Sea coast region in five days. Regional head Oleh Kiper stated that “probably a missile was targeting an infrastructure, but it struck nearby instead – this place.”
Russia has not made any comments on its recent missile attacks. Nine more people were killed early Thursday morning in an attack against a cargo vessel.
It’s not the first time that ballistic missiles have been fired at Odesa’s port. But never so many, in quick succession.
Oleksiy Kuleba, Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, said that Russia had launched 60 such attacks within three months. These attacks damaged or destroyed almost 300 port facilities. He said that 79 people were killed or injured and 22 civilian vessels were hit.
Oleh Kiper, a BBC reporter, said that Odesa’s current air defences could not cover all three ports of the Odesa region because they covered about 80km (50miles): “So our main focus is the city Odesa where more than a million people reside.” The rest of the towns and ports are still in a bad situation.
Other Ukrainian ports in the Zaporizhzhia region, Kherson, and Mykolayiv are no longer operational, making Odesa facilities more important for Ukrainian exports than ever.
He said that Russia is attacking civilian vessels to hurt Ukraine’s economy, and to scare everyone with what they could do.
Kiper said, “They hit [the ship in Odesa] to make the insurance companies and ship owners refuse entry into our ports, the combat zone.
Ukraine’s Prosecutor-General has announced that criminal proceedings have been initiated in the death of a prominent Ukrainian Journalist who chronicled life in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine under occupation.
Viktoriia Rosechchyna was briefly detained by the Russian authorities in the occupied eastern city Berdyansk, in 2022. She disappeared in August 2023 in the occupied east and it wasn’t until recently that the Russian authorities confirmed her whereabouts.
According to Ukrainian intelligence officials, she was supposed to be included in a prisoner swap. Russian reports claim that she died while being transferred to a Moscow detention centre on 19 September.
Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, said that Roshchyna’s death was a serious blow. “For us all in Ukraine, the issue remains extremely painful. “These are adults and children and many civilians are now being held in Russian prisons and camps,” he wrote in X.
Zelensky visited Pope Francis in the Vatican on Friday, before he headed to Berlin to meet with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
He is promoting “victory plans” to end the conflict and told a Berlin briefing that he would love to see the end of the war “no later next year, in 2025.” He added that it was important that aid for Kyiv not decrease in the upcoming year.
Zelensky had been promised by Giorgia Meloni, the Italian ambassador to Ukraine, that her support for Kyiv will last “for as many years as necessary”.
Zelensky denied that he was discussing terms of a ceasefire. “The key to strengthening Ukraine’s position and relations with its closest partners is to strengthen Ukraine’s positions,” he said.
Russian forces continue to gain ground in eastern Ukraine. On Friday, authorities in Toretsk, a strategically important hilltop town in eastern Ukraine said that only 40-50% remained under Ukrainian control.
Pokrovsk is also under pressure from Ukrainian troops who are outnumbered, outgunned, and understaffed. Both cities are vital to the army’s supply routes.
Ukraine’s military attacked a large oil terminal on the east of the Russian-occupied Crimea earlier this week.
Satellite images show that the offshore facility in Feodosia, which was attacked five days ago, is still burning. Igor Tkachenko, a Russian-installed official, said that although the fire wasn’t out yet, it was under control.
The Ukrainian military claimed that the terminal was the largest in Crimea, and it helped supply Russia’s occupier forces.
More than 1,000 residents were forced to leave their homes due to the strike. Kyiv claims that it is a retaliation against Russian attacks which have destroyed much its power infrastructure.
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