One person was killed and a further five were injured in a Russian missile attack on the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa on Monday evening, Odesa Governor Oleh Kiper said.
A 60-year-old Ukrainian citizen who worked for a private cargo handling company was killed when a Russian ballistic missile hit a Palau-flagged civilian ship in the city’s port, Kiper said, with five foreign citizens injured in the attack.
Russia was trying to “disrupt the work of the Ukrainian grain corridor” operating out of the city by launching a second attack on a civilian vessel in Ukraine’s Black Sea ports in two days, he said.
The Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority had previously reported that a Saint Kitts and Nevis-flagged ship loaded with 6,000 tons of corn had been damaged in a Russian ballistic missile strike on the nearby Pivdennyi port on Sunday.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha called the attacks on civilian vessels a “deliberate terrorist tactic” and said Russia was using them to “weaken Ukraine’s economy and put millions around the world at risk of hunger”.
“We must join forces of all responsible states and organisations to stop the aggressor [and] ensure freedom of navigation in the Black Sea and global food security,” Sybiha said.
Oleksiy Kuleba, Deputy Prime Minister for Restoration of Ukraine, said the attacks represented a “deliberate practice of intimidation and an attempt to obstruct the work of the Ukrainian maritime corridor” which would lead to “increased instability in sensitive regions of the world that rely on food imports and heightened tensions in international relations”.
