The head of Ukraine’s Odesa region has said its three ports are “not possible” to protect fully because they span such a large area and Russia has intensified its missile attacks.
He was speaking to the BBC after a 16-year-old girl, two women and a man were killed in a Russian strike on a two-floor building to the north-west of Odesa city.
It was the fourth such attack on the Black Sea coastal region in five days, and regional head Oleh Kiper said “probably a ballistic missile was targeting an infrastructure facility, but it hit nearby instead – into this place.”
Russia has not commented on its wave of missile strikes. A further nine people were killed in an attack on a cargo ship early on Thursday.
There have been ballistic missile strikes on Odesa’s ports before. But never so many, in quick succession.
Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said Russia had carried out 60 such attacks in just three months, damaging or destroying almost 300 port facilities. He said 79 people had been killed or wounded and 22 civilian vessels hit.
Oleh Kiper told the BBC that Odesa’s current air defences were unable to cover all three ports in Odesa region as they spanned over about 80km (50 miles): “So the main focus is on the city of Odesa, where over a million people live. The rest of the ports and towns remain in a difficult situation.”
Other Ukrainian ports – in the Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Mykolayiv regions – are no longer operating, making the facilities in Odesa more important than ever to Ukrainian exports.
He suggested Russia was attacking civilian vessels now to harm Ukraine’s economy and to scare the world with what it could do.
“They hit [the ships in Odesa] so that the insurance companies and the ship owners refuse to enter our ports, into the combat zone, Kiper said.
