Firefighters battled fires in Odessa until dawn on Tuesday after Russian missiles struck the Ukrainian port city on the day Russian President Vladimir Putin led celebrations in Moscow to mark the Soviet victory over Germany. Nazi in World War II.
In a defiant Victory Day speech on Monday, Putin urged Russians to fight for their motherland but was silent on plans for any escalation.
In Ukraine, there was no let up in the fighting, with Russian attacks on targets in the east and south and a renewed effort by Kremlin forces to defeat the last remaining Ukrainian troops at a steel mill in the ruins of Mariupol.
At least 100 civilians remain trapped at the steelworks, which has come under heavy Russian fire, an aide to the mayor of Mariupol said on Tuesday.
Airstrike sirens could be heard in several regions of Ukraine on Tuesday, including Luhansk, Kharkiv and Dnipro.
Serhiy Gaidai, governor of Luhansk, said the region had been attacked 22 times in the last 24 hours.
“During the 9th of May, the Russians fired en masse on all possible routes in the region.”
In Moscow, during the annual parade – with the usual ballistic missiles and tanks – Putin told the Russians that they were once again fighting the “Nazis”.
“You are fighting for the Fatherland, for its future, so that no one forgets the lessons of the Second World War. So that there is no place in the world for executioners, punishers and Nazis,” Putin said.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in his own speech on Monday, promised that the Ukrainians will win.
“On Victory over Nazism Day, we fight for a new victory. The road to that is difficult, but we have no doubt that we will win,” said Zelenskiy.
In Odessa, where the Black Sea’s main export port for agricultural products is located, one person died and five were injured when seven missiles hit a shopping mall and warehouse, Ukraine’s Armed Forces said on Facebook.
Video footage from the site showed firefighters and rescue workers sifting through piles of rubble and dousing the still-smoldering wreckage. Ukrainian emergency services said all fires sparked by the attacks had been extinguished on Tuesday.
Ukraine and its allies have been trying to find a way to unlock ports or provide alternative routes to export their significant crops of grain, wheat and corn.
European Council President Charles Michel visited Odessa on Monday, and his meeting with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal was interrupted by the missile attack.
Conversations continued in an air raid shelter, according to Shmyhal’s official Twitter account.
In the city of Bogodukhov, northwest of Kharkiv, four people were killed and several houses were destroyed in Russian attacks on Monday, Kharkiv officials said, according to local media.
Source: CNN Brasil
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