In what the Russian Defense Ministry called a “massive revenge strike,” kamikaze drones and six cruise missiles rained down on the coveted Black Sea port of Odesa, Mykolaiv, and elsewhere during a pre-dawn attack that came after Moscow terminated a deal that allowed Kyiv to ship vital grain exports from the port.
The aerial strikes, which mainly targeted both the port city of Odesa and the Mykolaiv region on the Black Sea coast, came some 24 hours after Ukrainian security services, the SBU, allegedly carried out an attack that damaged the Kerch Bridge, a strategic 19-kilometer bridge that connects the Crimean Peninsula to the mainland of the Russian Federation, and killed two people.
Attempted strikes on targets in the eastern regions of Donetsk, Kharkiv, and Dnipropetrovsk are also said to have been carried out. According to a report from Reuters, which cites Ukraine’s air force, all six Kalibr missiles that were launched and 31 of the 36 drones were intercepted.
Russia’s defense ministry in a statement wrote: “The armed forces of the Russian Federation carried out a mass retaliatory strike overnight using precision sea-based weapons against facilities where terrorist acts against the Russian Federation were being prepared using uncrewed boats.”
The ministry claimed that the precision strikes targeted a ship repair plant near Odesa where boats were being built. “In addition, storage facilities holding around 70,000 tons of fuel used to supply the Ukrainian military’s equipment were destroyed,” the ministry said, further claiming that all targets had been successfully hit and destroyed.
Ukrainian military’s Southern Command, for its part, said that its air defense systems intercepted six Kalibr cruise missiles “launched from the waters of the Black Sea at Odesa,” and twenty-one Iranian-made Shahid 136 drones, also referred to as ‘kamikaze drones,’ as they approached Odesa’s coastline from the sea.
“Unfortunately, the debris of the downed missiles and the blast wave from the downing damaged the port infrastructure facilities and several homes,” the military noted.
The Odesa region in southern Ukraine, roughly 300 kilometers from the Crimean peninsula, has been attacked frequently since the onset of the Russo-Ukrainian war in February of 2022.
In the southern port city of Mykolaiv, some 170 kilometers from Crimea, local governor Vitali Kim confirmed that an “industrial facility” had been damaged during the overnight airstrikes carried out by Russia.
Commenting on the overnight airstrikes, Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukrainian President Zelensky’s staff, said they were “further proof that the country-terrorist wants to endanger the lives of 400 million people in various countries that depend on Ukrainian food export.”
Together, Russia and Ukraine supply over a quarter of the world’s wheat, which developing nations are especially dependent upon.
Russia’s decision to terminate the grain deal has been criticized sharply by Western officials. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, for example, told reporters that the move would “strike a blow to people in need everywhere.”
“Hundreds of millions of people face hunger and consumers are confronting a global cost-of-living crisis. They will pay the price,” he said.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, for her part, took to Twitter to “strongly condemn” what she called “Russia’s cynical move to terminate the Black Sea Grain initiative” despite efforts by the UN and Turkey. She added that the EU would work to continue bringing “agrifood products out of Ukraine and to global markets.”
