Russia has intensified its strikes on the southern Ukrainian area of Odesa, inflicting widespread energy cuts and threatening the area’s maritime infrastructure.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba stated Moscow was finishing up “systematic” assaults on the area. Final week, he warned that the main focus of the struggle “might have shifted in the direction of Odesa”.
President Volodymyr Zelensky stated the repeated assaults had been an try by Moscow to dam Ukraine’s entry to maritime logistics.
Earlier in December, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to sever Ukraine’s entry to the ocean as retaliation for drone assaults on tankers of Russia’s “shadow fleet” within the Black Sea.
“Shadow fleet” is a time period that refers to tons of of tankers utilized by Russia to bypass Western sanctions imposed after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
On Sunday evening within the Odesa area, strikes lower off electrical energy for 120,000 folks and sparked a hearth at a significant port which destroyed dozens of containers of flour and vegetable oil.
It was the newest in a collection of tons of of strikes which have disrupted energy provides within the area for days on finish and induced a number of casualties.
Final week, a ballistic missile strike on the Pivdenniy port east of Odesa killed eight folks and injured at the very least 30.
One other assault earlier within the week killed a lady who was travelling in a automobile together with her three kids and briefly lower off the Odesa area’s solely bridge linking Ukraine and Moldova.
Zelensky indicated a brand new commander of the air power for the area could be chosen quickly following the dismissal of Dmytro Karpenko over the weekend.
Odesa’s port has at all times been key for the nation’s financial system. Town is Ukraine’s third largest after Kyiv and Kharkiv. It now occupies strategic significance as different ports within the Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Mykolayiv areas are inaccessible to Ukraine as a result of Russian occupation.
Regardless of the struggle, Ukraine stays one of many world’s high exporters of wheat and corn.
Since August 2023, Odesa has been the place to begin of an important hall that permits it to export grain overseas, following the coastlines of Romania and Bulgaria earlier than reaching Turkey.
Zelensky, who has beforehand accused Russia of “sowing chaos” on the folks of Odesa, stated that “everybody should see that with out strain on Russia, they haven’t any intention of genuinely ending their aggression”.
His feedback got here as the newest spherical of US-led diplomatic efforts wrapped up in Miami. The US individually met the Ukrainian and Russian delegations, with the conferences yielding optimistic statements however no clear progress to carry the tip of Moscow’s practically four-year struggle on Ukraine any nearer.
US President Donald Trump’s particular envoy Steve Witkoff stated he and his Ukrainian counterpart Rustem Umerov had labored on “aligning positions” on a 20-point draft peace plan put ahead by Ukraine earlier this month. The plan is a substitute for a proposal introduced by the US in November, which was seen as beneficial to Moscow.
Earlier than Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev even returned to Moscow from Florida, Kremlin international coverage aide Yuri Ushakov informed reporters that the European and Ukrainian adjustments to the peace proposal wouldn’t enhance the possibilities of peace being achieved.
On Monday, Russian Deputy International Minister Sergei Ryabkov accused EU international locations of getting a “agency aspiration” to derail potential Russia-US agreements on Ukraine and to “on the whole forestall Russia-American relations getting more healthy”.
He additionally stated European international locations had been “possessed by a maniacal” worry of a Russian assault. Russia was prepared to verify in a authorized settlement that it had no intention of attacking both the EU or Nato, Ryabkov added, echoing earlier feedback from Putin.
“We have by no means deliberate to [attack Europe], but when they wish to hear it from us, effectively, let’s do it, we’ll put it in writing,” Putin stated in November.
