Ukraine war: Odesa and Melitopol under attack

Both sides of the conflict have launched attacks on southern Ukraine, with Russia firing drones at Odessa and Kiev retaliating near Melitopol. The Ukrainian army claimed to have shot down 10 drones on Saturday, but an additional five struck electrical infrastructure, knocking out electricity for about 1.5 million people.

Later, the exiled mayor of Melitopol, a Ukrainian, claimed that an attack had been conducted on the city under Russian control. There is a large fire seen in pictures posted by a Russian official there. According to Ukrainian officials, Russia used drones built in Iran in its drone strike on the Ukrainian port city of Odesa.

“The situation in the Odesa region is very difficult,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly video address. “Unfortunately the hits were critical, so it takes more than just time to restore electricity. It doesn’t take hours, but a few days.”

Moscow has been employing heavy missile and drone assaults against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure since October.

Ivan Fedorov, the exiled mayor, claimed that scores of “invaders” had been slain while pro-Moscow officials in Melitopol claimed that a missile attack had killed two persons and injured ten others.

“Air defence systems destroyed two missiles, four reached their targets,” Yevgeny Balitsky, the Moscow-appointed governor of the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region, said on the Telegram messaging app.Oleksiy Arestovych, a presidential counsellor, described Melitopol, which Russia has held since March, as essential to the defence of the south.

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