Russia escalates attacks on key Ukrainian region of Odesa
Russia has intensified its attacks on Ukraine’s southern region of Odesa, causing widespread power outages and threatening the region’s maritime infrastructure.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said that Moscow was carrying out “systematic” attacks in the region. He warned last week that the focus of the war “may have shifted to Odessa.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky said the repeated attacks were Moscow’s attempt to deny Ukraine access to maritime logistics.
In early December, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to cut off Ukraine’s access to the sea in retaliation for drone attacks on tankers belonging to Russia’s “shadow fleet” in the Black Sea.
“Shadow fleet” is a term that refers to the hundreds of tankers Russia is using to evade Western sanctions imposed after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Monday evening’s attacks hit port infrastructure in Odessa and damaged a civilian ship, the regional governor said.
It was the latest in hundreds of attacks that caused power outages in the region for days and resulted in many casualties.
On Sunday night, strikes cut power to 120,000 people and a fire broke out at a major port, burning dozens of containers of flour and vegetable oil.
Last week, eight people were killed and at least 30 people were injured in the ballistic missile attack on the Pivdenniy port east of Odesa.
In another attack earlier in the week, a woman traveling in a car with her three children was killed and the Odesa region’s only bridge connecting Ukraine and Moldova was temporarily cut.
Zelensky stated that a new air force commander for the region will be elected soon after Dimitro Karpenko was dismissed over the weekend.
The port of Odessa has always been the key to the country’s economy. The city is the third largest city in Ukraine after Kyiv and Kharkiv. Zaporizhzhia is now of strategic importance due to the inaccessibility of Ukraine to other ports in the Kherson and Mykolayiv regions due to the Russian occupation.
Despite the war, Ukraine remains one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat and corn.
Since August 2023, Odessa has been the starting point of an important corridor that allows grain to be exported out of the country, following the coasts of Romania and Bulgaria before reaching Türkiye.
Zelensky, who had previously accused Russia of “sowing chaos” on the people of Odessa, said, “Everyone needs to see that they have no intention of really ending their aggression without putting pressure on Russia.”
His comments came after the latest round of US-led diplomatic efforts wrapped up in Miami. He met separately with the US, Ukrainian and Russian delegations. Optimistic statements were made at the meetings, but no clear progress was made that would bring the end of Moscow’s nearly four-year-old war against Ukraine closer.
US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said he and his Ukrainian counterpart Rustem Umerov were working on “harmonizing positions” on the draft 20-point peace plan put forward by Ukraine earlier this month. The plan is an alternative to the proposal presented by the United States in November, which was seen as favorable to Moscow.
Before Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev returned to Moscow from Florida, Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters that changes made by Europe and Ukraine to the peace proposal would not increase the chances of achieving peace.
On Monday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov accused EU countries of having a “definite desire” to derail potential Russia-US deals on Ukraine and “prevent Russian-American relations from becoming healthier in general.”
He also said European countries have a “maniacal fear” of a Russian attack. Ryabkov echoed Putin’s previous comments, adding that Russia was ready to confirm with a legal agreement that it did not intend to attack the EU or NATO.
“We never planned [attack Europe]But if they want to hear it from us, let’s do it, we will put it in writing,” Putin said in November.
