Russia has launched a volley of strikes against targets in southern and eastern Ukraine using drones and possibly ballistic missiles, Ukraine’s air force has said.
The southern port of Odesa and the Mykolaiv, Donetsk, Kherson, Zaporizhia, and Dnipropetrovsk regions were all on high alert from Russian drone attacks, the air force said on the Telegram messaging app in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
A fire broke out in the port of Mykolaiv late on Monday, the mayor said. The port city provides Ukraine with access to the Black Sea.
“It’s quite serious,” Mykolaiv’s Mayor Oleksandr Senkevich said on the Telegram messaging app, adding that more detail on the fire will be released later in the morning.
Russia aimed several waves of Shahed drones and six Kalibr cruise missiles at the Black Sea port city of Odesa overnight, Ukraine’s Operational Command “South” has said, with all shot down by air defences.
But debris from the rockets and drones injured an elderly man and damaged “port infrastructure facilities” and several private homes, it said in a Facebook post.
In Mykolaiv, four Shahed drones were shot down but an industrial facility caught fire, it said. There were no casualties.
Russia may also be using ballistic weaponry to attack the regions of Poltava, Cherkasy, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv and Kirovohrad, the air force added.
Air raid alerts sounded in many Ukrainian regions for hours on Tuesday morning, before being called off at about 04:30am local time (01:30 GMT).
Russia blamed Ukraine for both attacks. A spokesman for the Ukrainian Security Service on Monday did not directly acknowledge responsibility but said the service would reveal details about organizing the blast once Ukraine achieves victory in the war.
Later on Monday Moscow halted a breakthrough wartime deal that allowed grain to flow from Ukraine to countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia where hunger is a growing threat and high food prices have pushed more people into poverty.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Black Sea Grain Initiative would be suspended until demands to get Russian food and fertilizer to the world are met.
“When the part of the Black Sea deal related to Russia is implemented, Russia will immediately return to the implementation of the deal,” Peskov said.
The suspension marks the end of an accord that the UN and Turkey brokered last summer to allow shipments of food from the Black Sea region after Russia’s invasion of its neighbor worsened a global food crisis.
The initiative is credited with helping reduce soaring prices of wheat, vegetable oil and other global food commodities.
