4.3.22
Ukraine’s Black Sea port city of Odesa was targeted by air strikes early on April 3, Interior Ministry official Anton Herashchenko wrote in a post on Telegram. “Fires were reported in some areas,” he wrote. “Some of the missiles were shot down by air defense.” The Telegram channel of the Odesa city council confirmed the attacks. A journalist with the French AFP news agency in Odesa reported hearing explosions at around 6 a.m. and seeing at least three columns of black smoke rising above an industrial part of the city. Odesa, with a population of about 1 million, is the largest Black Sea port still under Ukrainian control. The Russian Defense Ministry said on April 3 that it had struck on oil refinery and oil storage facilities near the city. On April 2, Zelenskiy warned that Russia was preparing “powerful strikes” in the south of the country as it withdrew forces from areas around Kyiv and Chernihiv in the north. In an April 3 bulletin, Britain’s Defense Ministry said Russia continues to blockade access to Ukraine through the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Russia “retains the capability to attempt an amphibious landing” along Ukraine’s southern coast, “but such an operation is likely to be increasingly high risk due to the time Ukrainian forces have had to prepare,” the ministry posted on Twitter.
In the embattled city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, some 100,000 civilians remain trapped and surrounded by Russian forces. Analysts believe Russia is intent on capturing the strategic port to create a land corridor from the Donbas region, which is partially controlled by Moscow-backed separatist formations supported by Russian troops, and the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014. Zelenskiy said Mariupol’s resistance had given Ukraine “invaluable time” to retake territory in the north, “time that is allowing us to foil the enemy’s tactics and weaken its capabilities.” “Peace will not be the result of any decisions the enemy makes somewhere in Moscow,” Zelenskiy added. “There is no need to entertain empty hopes that they will simply leave our land. We can only have peace by fighting.” The mayor of the newly liberated Kyiv suburb of Bucha said on April 2 that some 300 local residents had been killed during the month that Russian forces held the town. Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk told AFP that all of the victims had been “shot dead in the back of the head” and many of the bodies were buried in a mass grave.
www.rferl.org
