Russian missile strikes on residential areas in a coastal town near the Ukrainian port city of Odessa killed at least 19 people on Friday morning, authorities said, a day after Russian forces withdrew from a strategic island. of the Black Sea.
Video of the predawn attack showed the charred remains of buildings in the small town of Serhiivka, located about 50 kilometers (31 miles) southwest of Odessa. The Ukrainian president’s office said three X-22 missiles fired by Russian bombers hit an apartment building and two camps.
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“A terrorist country is killing our people. In response to battlefield defeats, they fight civilians,” said Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The Ukrainian Security Service said 19 people were killed, including two children. He said 38 others, including six children and a pregnant woman, were hospitalized with injuries. Most of the victims were in the apartment building, Ukrainian emergency officials said.
The airstrikes followed the withdrawal of Russian forces from Snake Island on Thursday, a move that was expected to potentially ease the threat to nearby Odessa, home to Ukraine’s largest port. The island is located along a busy shipping lane.
Russia took control of it in the early days of the war in the apparent hope of using it as a staging ground for an assault on Odessa. The Kremlin described the departure of Russian troops from Snake Island as a “goodwill gesture” intended to facilitate shipments of grain and other agricultural products to Africa, the Middle East and other parts of the world.
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The Ukrainian military claimed that a barrage from its artillery and missiles forced the Russians to flee in two small speedboats. The exact number of troops withdrawn was not disclosed.
The island rose to prominence early in the war as a symbol of Ukraine’s resistance to Russian invasion. Ukrainian troops there reportedly received a demand from a Russian warship to surrender or be bombed. The answer allegedly came back: “Go (expletive) yourself.”
Zelenskyy said that although the withdrawal did not guarantee the security of the Black Sea region, it would “significantly limit” Russian activities there.
“Step by step, we will get (Russia) out of our sea, our land, our sky,” he said in his late-night speech.
Ukraine’s presidential office said a series of Russian strikes in the past 24 hours have also killed civilians in eastern Ukraine: four in the northeastern Kharkiv region and another four in Donetsk province.
Russian bombing killed large numbers of civilians early in the war, including in a hospital and theater in the port city of Mariupol. Mass casualties seemed to become less frequent as Moscow focused on capturing the entire Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.
However, a missile attack on Monday at a shopping mall in Kremenchuk, a city in central Ukraine, killed at least 19 people and wounded 62 others, authorities said on Friday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin denied on Thursday that Russian forces had attacked the mall and said his country does not attack civilian facilities. He claimed that the target in Kremenchuk was a nearby weapons depot, echoing military officials’ comments about him.
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