March 23, 2024

Ukraine’s DNIPRO Following a string of explosions in Crimea that analysts believe were a part of a larger operation to drive Russian forces out of land in the south of the country, Russian missiles launched attacks on two Ukrainian port cities.

Rockets landed on the city early on Wednesday, according to Serhiy Bratchuk, chief of the regional military administration for Odessa. According to the southern command of the Ukrainian military, the missiles were fired from an aircraft and damaged a recreation centre while hurting four people.

 

Oleksandr Sienkevych, the mayor of Mykolaiv, reported hearing blasts in several different neighbourhoods. A university that Mr. Sienkevych claimed to have visited a few days prior was hit by two missiles.

The explosions in Crimea were the second to occur in less than two weeks before the strikes. More than 3,000 people within a three-mile radius had to be evacuated as a result of Tuesday’s explosions at a munitions stockpile, and trains on the adjoining rail line had to be suspended. According to a Ukrainian official, saboteurs were behind the explosions. As their first formal admission of a strike on the peninsula they annexed in 2014, Russia also claimed it was sabotage.

 

Russian commanders would probably be “increasingly concerned with the perceived deterioration in security across Crimea, which operates as a rear base region for the occupation,” the U.K. Ministry of Defense stated on Wednesday.