KIEV, Ukraine (AP) – Russian forces fired cruise missiles at the southern Ukrainian city of Odessa overnight and shelled destroyed homes in the eastern Donetsk region early Wednesday. At least six people were killed and more than a dozen others injured, regional officials said.
A spokesman for Ukraine’s military said Russian forces had stepped up airstrikes in their more than 15-month war against Ukraine, while the country’s troops reported limited success in an early counteroffensive.
In the east, Donetsk region governor Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote on Telegram that at least three people had died after shelling destroyed seven houses and damaged dozens more in the cities of Kramatorsk and Konstantinovka.
In Odessa, three workers at a food warehouse were killed and seven others injured in a strike that damaged houses, a warehouse, shops and cafes in the city center, the regional administration said on Facebook. Another six people – guards and residents of a neighboring house – were injured.
Search forces were looking under the rubble for possible survivors, it said.
The attack on the port city launched from the Black Sea involved four Kalibr cruise missiles, three of which were intercepted by air defenses, the government said.
Andriy Kovalov, a spokesman for Ukraine’s General Staff, said Russian forces have stepped up missile and airstrikes on Ukraine.
In a briefing, he said the attacks on the Kharkiv, Donetsk and Kirovohrad regions and the Odessa region involved Kh-22 cruise missiles, sea-launched Kalibr cruise missiles and Iranian-made Shahed drones. Nine were intercepted.
Kovalov said Ukrainian forces had made progress on several fronts of the roughly 1,000-kilometer frontline and fighting continued in or near at least two settlements in the eastern Donetsk region. Russia has occupied and controls almost a fifth of Ukraine’s territory.
The British MoD, which provides regular updates on the conflict, wrote on Twitter that southern Ukraine was “often open to Russian air operations” compared to other parts of the frontline.
Separately, the mayor of downtown Kryvyi Rih, the hometown of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the death toll from a Russian attack a day earlier that hit an apartment building had risen to 12.
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