Fatal attack on Odessa
Downed Russian drone kills three people
February 23, 2024, 2:09 p.m
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Russia repeatedly attacks Ukraine with drone and missile attacks. At night it hits the port city of Odessa. Although the anti-aircraft defense can fend off the Russian drone swarm, it cannot prevent a fatal impact. It has fatal consequences for refugees from the East.
Russia killed at least three people with drone attacks on the Ukrainian port city of Odessa ahead of the second anniversary of its war of aggression. According to the authorities, the victims died in the rubble of a completely destroyed industrial building, which also burned down during the night. “This time nine drones were deployed in the direction of Odessa,” the spokeswoman for the southern group of the Ukrainian army, Natalya Humenyuk, told journalists. She described the nighttime attack as another test of the Russian military’s anti-aircraft defenses.
Among other things, Russia has deployed several anti-radar missiles, said Humenyuk. However, none of these achieved their goal due to poor production quality. All drones were hit, but one drone that was shot down fell into the industrial area. “There was a fire in an area of 500 square meters. Unfortunately, the fight took a long time,” she said. The three people could not have been saved.
“I heard the drones and the defensive fire. Then the explosion,” said the facility’s night watchman, Olena Knap, at the scene of the impact. Those killed were relatives of the company owner. They were refugees from eastern Ukraine who lived nearby. Hours after the explosion, she herself carries belongings from the guardhouse a few meters in front of the building that was hit, where she survived the impact uninjured. She climbed out of a window and says: “I was deafened by the bang.”
Odessa in the focus of Russian attacks
Odessa has enormous economic importance for Ukraine. The port city is logistically the gateway to the world and so attacks in this area are also part of Russian attempts to cut off Ukraine’s foreign trade. Of Ukraine’s 18 seaports, only 6 are currently in operation, said Dmytro Barinov, deputy head of the state port authority, in Odessa. These include three ports in the Danube region that only allow ships to have a shallow draft of around seven meters. There are much larger capacities in the three ports in the greater Odessa area. “Every time there’s an air raid, the workers go into shelter,” he said.
There have also been targeted attacks, such as last year when a pilot was killed by a rocket hit on the bridge of a merchant ship. Russia wants to disrupt civilian maritime traffic. The merchant ships approach Odessa on routes protected by the coast and wait on the other side of the Bosphorus – i.e. in the Sea of Marmara in front of Istanbul – for their time slot to enter.
The leadership in Kiev is continually calling for more support from the West in expanding anti-aircraft defenses in order to better protect the country’s cities from attacks by rockets, cruise missiles and drones and thus save more lives.