Russia has intensified its strikes on the southern Ukrainian region of Odesa, causing widespread power cuts and threatening the region's maritime infrastructure.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba stated that Moscow was carrying out systematic attacks on the region, warning that the focus of the war may have shifted towards Odesa.
President Volodymyr Zelensky labeled the repeated attacks as attempts by Russia to block Ukraine's access to maritime logistics.
Earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to sever Ukraine's access to the sea as retaliation for drone attacks on tankers associated with Russia's shadow fleet in the Black Sea.
The shadow fleet comprises numerous tankers employed by Russia to evade Western sanctions following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Recent strikes have led to the loss of electricity for 120,000 residents and ignited a fire at a major port, destroying a vast quantity of flour and vegetable oil.
This is part of a series of hundreds of strikes that have disrupted power supplies for consecutive days and resulted in fatalities. Just last week, a ballistic missile attack on the Pivdenniy port east of Odesa killed eight individuals and injured at least 30.
In another incident, an attack early in the week took the life of a woman traveling in a car with her three children and momentarily interrupted the Odesa region's only bridge linking Ukraine and Moldova.
Zelensky announced plans to appoint a new commander for the region's air defense following the dismissal of Dmytro Karpenko over the weekend.
Odesa's port remains crucial for Ukraine's economy, being the country's third-largest city after Kyiv and Kharkiv. The port now holds significant strategic importance, as other ports in the Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Mykolayiv regions are inaccessible due to Russian occupation.
Despite the ongoing war, Ukraine continues to rank among the world's top exporters of wheat and corn. Since August 2023, Odesa has served as the launch point for a critical corridor enabling grain exports, traversing along coastlines to Romania, and Bulgaria, before reaching Turkey.
Zelensky expressed concern that without pressure on Russia, there would be no genuine initiative to conclude the ongoing aggression against Ukraine.
His statement coincided with the conclusion of the latest round of US-led diplomatic discussions in Miami, where attempts to align positions on a proposed peace plan did not yield significant results.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov accused EU nations of attempting to undermine potential Russia-US agreements regarding Ukraine and fostering concerns about military threats from Russia, which Moscow claims it has no intention of executing.
