A Russian missile strike on a ship carrying corn near Ukraine’s southern port of Odesa killed 10 people, Ukrainian officials said yesterday, in the deadliest attack in a weeks-long flare-up of violence in the Black Sea.
Russia hit the Golden Leo – a Guinea-Bissau-flagged ship manned by a crew from India and Syria – with three cruise missiles, causing a fire on Sunday, Ukraine’s navy wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
A Reuters witness in Odesa saw smoke billowing from a vessel off the coast on Sunday, which Reuters was able to confirm was the Golden Leo.
A search and rescue operation lasted all night, Ukraine’s seaports authority said, adding that nine crew members and one of its maritime pilots were killed. Eight of the vessel’s 17 crew members were rescued, it added.
Meanwhile, Ukraine targeted Moscow and the surrounding region with 400 drones overnight, wounding 10 people and setting buildings ablaze, Russian officials said yesterday.
In a statement on Telegram, Moscow region governor Andrei Vorobyov said that seven people, including three Chinese nationals, had been wounded in a drone attack on the town of Domodedovo, close to one of Moscow’s main airports.
The mayor of Domodedovo, Yevgeniya Khrustaleva, said in a statement on Telegram that a fire had broken out at a local industrial park, and that a residential building had also been struck.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv had struck logistical facilities and an oil depot in the region of the Russian capital. Further south, on the Ukrainian border, the governor of Belgorod region said that five persons had been killed and four injured by a drone attack on a village close to the frontier.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said more than 400 “enemy drones” were launched at the Moscow region between 8:30 pm (1730 GMT) and 5:00 am (0200 GMT).
Most were neutralised by air defence systems at a long range, including 85 destroyed while approaching the Russian capital.
