Russia has intensified its attacks on Ukraine’s southern Odesa region, causing widespread power outages and threatening the area’s maritime infrastructure, the BBC has reported.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said Moscow was carrying out “systematic” strikes on the region. Last week, he warned that the focus of the war “may have shifted toward Odesa.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that the repeated attacks were an attempt by Moscow to block Ukraine’s access to maritime logistics.
Earlier in December, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to cut off Ukraine’s access to the sea in retaliation for drone attacks on Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” oil tankers in the Black Sea.
The term “shadow fleet” refers to hundreds of oil tankers used by Russia to bypass Western sanctions imposed following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
On Monday evening, strikes hit port infrastructure in Odesa, damaging a civilian vessel, according to the regional governor.
This marked the latest in a series of hundreds of attacks that have disrupted power supplies across the region for days at a time and resulted in multiple casualties.
On Sunday night, strikes cut electricity to 120,000 people and sparked a fire at a major port, destroying dozens of containers filled with flour and vegetable oil.
Last week, a ballistic missile strike on the Pivdennyi port, east of Odesa, killed eight people and wounded at least 30 others.
Another attack earlier in the week killed a woman traveling in a car with her three children and temporarily severed the only bridge in the Odesa region connecting Ukraine with Moldova.
