Moscow has responded to the manifest support for Ukraine reiterated yesterday by NATO leaders in Madrid with a double attack near the port of Odessa. At least 17 people have died and dozens have been injured by missiles launched at a residential building and a tourist center in the Bilhorod-Dnistrovsky district, in the south-west of the country, the emergency service reported by the local agency Ukrinform.
According to this service, in the attack, which occurred during the early hours of Friday, 30 other people were injured, including three children. Seven other people were able to be rescued from the rubble, including three other children.
With its ground forces concentrated in Ukraine's eastern industrial Donbas region, Russia has more than doubled the number of missile strikes across the country in the past two weeks, including in Kyiv or the commercial hub of Kremenchuk. To do this, Moscow uses imprecise Soviet-era missiles in more than half of the attacks, a Ukrainian brigadier general told Reuters.
One of these rockets hit a nine-story building in the city of Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi around 1 a.m., Ukraine's Emergencies Ministry noted. It also caused a fire in an attached store building. The other fell on a tourist facility, killing three people, including a child. Both were launched by "Russian strategic aircraft flying over the Black Sea", according to the emergency service.
Odessa regional administration spokesman Serhiy Bratchuk told Ukrainian state television that a rescue operation was underway as some people remained buried under rubble after part of the building collapsed. So far, rescuers have been able to rescue seven people, including three children, from under the ruins, the State Emergency Service said in a message on Facebook.
Thousands of civilians have been killed since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 in what Ukraine says is an unprovoked war of aggression. Moscow denies targeting civilians and says it is only targeting military infrastructure in what it calls a "special operation" to root out dangerous nationalists.
The Odessa region, whose capital of the same name has the only seaport in Ukraine that the Russians do not yet control, borders Moldova and Romania. With the withdrawal of Russian forces from nearby Snake Island yesterday, the threat to the port was expected to abate.
Russia said it was leaving the strategic islet as a "goodwill gesture" to show that Moscow was not obstructing UN efforts to open a humanitarian corridor to allow grain shipments from Ukraine. Kyiv, on the other hand, claimed to have expelled Russian forces after an artillery and missile assault, with President Volodymyr Zelensky praising the victory.
“It still doesn't guarantee safety. It still does not guarantee that the enemy will not return," the Ukrainian president said in his late-night video address. "But this significantly limits the actions of the occupiers. Step by step, we will drive them away from our sea, our land and our sky."
The Russians have so far limited their attacks in this area and have focused on destroying the infrastructure that links the region to its European borders.
This attack occurs one day after the NATO Summit was held in Madrid in which the allies strengthened their support for Ukraine and their rejection of the invasion it is suffering from Moscow, whom they have gone from considering a strategic partner to a greatest danger to the West.
Ukraine's Western allies have been sending arms to the Kyiv government, which received another boost yesterday when the United States announced after the Madrid summit that it would provide another $800 million in arms and military aid. US President Joe Biden claimed that Washington and its allies were united to stand up to Russian President Vladimir Putin. "I don't know how (the war) is going to end, but it's not going to end with Russia defeating Ukraine," Biden told a news conference. "We are going to support Ukraine as long as it takes."
