‘Hellish night’ in Odesa as Russian strikes target Ukrainian port city

Receive free War in Ukraine updates

We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest War in Ukraine news every morning.

Russia pummelled the port city of Odesa with a second night of air strikes, described by Ukrainian officials as an attempt by Moscow to choke off grain exports to global food markets.

The onslaught, which included attacks on Kyiv and other cities, came two days after Russia withdrew from last year’s UN-brokered agreement to allow Ukrainian Black Sea grain exports to continue despite the war.

Russia said it would now deem all vessels heading to Ukraine’s ports as military threats, signalling its intent to reimpose a naval blockade that is likely to increase pressure on global grain prices and supplies.

“All vessels heading to Ukrainian ports in Black Sea waters will be regarded as potentially carrying military cargo,” the Russian defence ministry said on Wednesday. “The countries whose flags such vessels are carrying will be regarded as ones involved in the Ukrainian conflict on the side of Kyiv.”

The strikes followed Russian president Vladimir Putin’s pledge to punish Kyiv for a Monday drone attack that damaged the Crimean bridge connecting the occupied peninsula to Russian territory, which Moscow blamed on Ukraine.

“It was the most hellish night,” Serhiy Bratchuk, spokesperson for Odesa’s military administration, said in a video address on Wednesday. Footage posted on social media showed huge explosions rocking what was one of Ukraine’s most cosmopolitan cities before Putin launched his full-scale invasion just over 500 days ago.

Ukraine’s air force said 37 out of the 63 missiles and drones that had been aimed at “critical infrastructure and military facilities” were intercepted, adding that Odesa had been the main target.

Odesa’s governor Oleg Kiper said “dozens of missiles and attack drones” hit the region. “The main targets were port and critical infrastructure,” he said.

“A grain and oil terminal were hit” in addition to civilian buildings, hotels and tourist sites damaged by falling debris that injured at least six civilians, he added.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser in Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s administration, said Russia “deliberately and intentionally struck at grain terminals and other port facilities . . . to destroy the possibility of shipping Ukrainian grain”.

In his Twitter post, Podolyak asked whether the UN leadership would take action against “the deliberate act of terrorism committed by Russian Federation against the global food programme”.

“Does this determine whether there will be hunger in some of your countries?” Zelenskyy said in an interview with African journalists released on Tuesday.

Ukraine’s armed forces, meanwhile, claimed incremental gains in a counteroffensive launched early last month that has struggled to liberate eastern and southern regions from Russian forces.

Hanna Maliar, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, said a days-long Russian offensive towards the north-eastern town of Kupyansk had failed, adding that “the initiative is now on our side”.

She and other military officials also claimed unspecified small gains near the bombed-out eastern city of Bakhmut and in southern frontline areas north of the Azov Sea.

Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-installed leader of Crimea, announced the evacuation of more than 2,000 people and the closure of a motorway near a military training ground where explosions erupted for many hours overnight. He did not give an explanation for what had triggered what appeared to be the detonation of a weapons depot, nor did Ukrainian officials take credit for a strike at the site.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin had received a report about the fire. “Measures are being taken, the situation is being clarified,” he said.