Odessa puts out fires after Russian missile attack

KYIV/KHARKIV, Ukraine, May 10 (Reuters) – Firefighters battled flames in Odessa until early Tuesday after Russian missiles hit the Ukrainian port on the day President Vladimir Putin led Moscow’s celebrations of a Soviet victory. about Nazi Germany in World War II.

In a defiant Victory Day speech on Monday, Putin exhorted Russians to fight for their homeland but was silent on plans for any escalation. In Ukraine, the fighting did not stop, with Russian attacks on targets in the east and south and a renewed push by Kremlin forces to defeat the last Ukrainian troops holding out in a steel mill in the ruins of Mariupol.

At least 100 civilians were trapped in the plant, which remained under heavy Russian fire, an aide to the mayor of Mariupol said on Tuesday.

Air raid sirens were heard in several regions of Ukraine early Tuesday, including Luhansk, Kharkiv and Dnipro.

Serhiy Gaidai, governor of Lugansk, said the region has been attacked 22 times in the last 24 hours.

“During the day of May 9, the Russians fired en masse on all possible routes out of the region.”

In Moscow, during Monday’s annual parade, with the usual ballistic missiles and tanks rumbling on the cobblestones, Putin told Russians they were fighting “Nazis” again.

“They are fighting for the Motherland, for their future, so that no one forgets the lessons of World War II. So that there is no place in the world for executioners, punishers and Nazis,” Putin said.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in his own speech on Monday, promised that the Ukrainians would win.

“On Victory Over Nazism Day, we are fighting for a new victory. The road to it is difficult, but we have no doubt that we will win,” Zelenskiy said.

In Odessa, the main Black Sea port for exporting agricultural products, one person was killed and five wounded when seven missiles hit a shopping mall and a warehouse, Ukraine’s armed forces said on Facebook.

Video footage from the scene showed firefighters and rescuers combing through mounds of debris by spraying remains that were still smoking. Ukrainian emergency services said all fires sparked by the strikes were extinguished early Tuesday.

Ukraine and its allies have been trying to find a way to unblock ports or provide alternative routes to export their important crops of grain, wheat and corn.

European Council President Charles Michel visited Odessa on Monday and his meeting with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal was interrupted by the missile attack.

Their talks continued in a bomb shelter, according to Shmyhal’s official Twitter account.

In the city of Bogodukhov, northwest of Kharkiv, four people were killed and several houses were destroyed in Russian strikes on Monday, local media said, citing Kharkiv officials.

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said Russian forces backed by tanks and artillery were conducting “assault operations” on Mariupol’s Azovstal plant, where hundreds of Ukrainian defenders held out during months of siege.

The capture of Mariupol, located on the Crimean peninsula seized by Russia in 2014, and parts of eastern Ukraine under the control of Moscow-backed separatists, would allow Russia to unite the two areas.

‘REVISIONIST DISINFORMATION’

The number of Ukrainians who have fled their country since Russia’s invasion on February 24 was approaching 6 million, according to the United Nations, which it called the fastest-growing refugee crisis since World War II.

Moscow’s gains from the invasion, however, have been slow at best and it has little to show for it beyond a sliver of territory in the south and marginal gains in the east.

US President Joe Biden said he was worried Putin “doesn’t have a way out right now, and I’m trying to figure out what we can do about it.”

Sources say US Democratic lawmakers have agreed to a $40 billion aid proposal for Ukraine, which includes a massive package of new weapons. read more

The White House had previously described Putin’s comments during his Victory Day speech as “revisionist history that took the form of disinformation.”

The Soviet victory in World War II has taken on almost mythical status in Russia under Putin, who has invoked the memory of the “Great Patriotic War” throughout what he calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine.

Western countries consider that a false analogy to justify unprovoked aggression.

“There can be no day of victory, only dishonor and surely defeat in Ukraine,” British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said.

In Poland, the Russian ambassador was surrounded by protesters at a memorial ceremony and sprayed with red paint. Ambassador Sergei Andreev, his face streaming and his shirt stained, said he was “proud of my country and my president.”

Kateryna Grigoriyevna, 79, took refuge in a metro station in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second mainly Russian-speaking city and which has been relentlessly bombed since the first days of the war, while eating an ice cream she had ventured to buy. for Victory Day.

“We hate Putin,” he said, looking around the platform where some 200 people were huddled in tents and thin mattresses.

“I would kill him myself if I could.”

Additional reporting by Oleksandr Kozhukhar in Lviv, Ronald Popeski in Winnipeg, Lidia Kelly in Melbourne, and Reuters offices; Written by Lincoln Feast and Tomasz Janowski; Edited by Himani Sarkar and Raissa Kasolowsky

Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.