BY EMMANUEL OGBONNA
Russian forces launched an overnight wave of drone attacks on the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa, striking residential buildings and critical energy infrastructure and injuring six people, including a toddler and two other children, local officials said on Wednesday.
The bombardment damaged at least four apartment buildings across the city, according to Oleh Kiper, head of the regional military administration. Emergency crews were dispatched to multiple locations to extinguish fires, evacuate residents and assess structural damage as residents emerged from shelters in the early morning hours.
Ukraine’s largest private energy company, DTEK, said two of its energy facilities in the Odesa region sustained significant damage in the attack, disrupting electricity supplies to parts of the city and surrounding areas. The company noted that the latest strike was part of a sustained campaign against the region’s power network, adding that 10 electricity substations in Odesa province alone have been damaged since the start of December.
Russia has sharply intensified its use of long-range drones and missiles against Ukrainian cities over the past year, increasingly focusing on civilian areas and essential services. As the full-scale invasion nears its fourth anniversary in February, Moscow has also stepped up strikes on power plants, substations and heating systems, a strategy Ukrainian officials say is aimed at leaving civilians without heat, electricity and running water during the harsh winter months.
The human toll of the conflict continues to rise. The United Nations reported earlier this month that more than 2,300 Ukrainian civilians were killed and over 11,000 injured between January and November this year. That figure represents a 26% increase compared with the same period last year and a 70% rise from 2023, underscoring the escalating impact of the war on noncombatants.
The latest attacks come amid renewed international diplomatic activity aimed at ending the conflict. U.S. President Donald Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at his Florida resort on Sunday and said afterward that a potential settlement was “closer than ever before.” Zelenskyy is expected to hold further talks next week with European leaders who have backed Ukraine politically and militarily, as Kyiv seeks security guarantees and acceptable terms for any agreement.
Despite those efforts, the violence on the ground has shown no sign of easing. Kiper described the Odesa strikes as further proof of what he called Russia’s deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, accusing Moscow of using terror tactics to pressure the population.
Tensions have also been heightened by competing claims over cross-border drone attacks. Russian authorities alleged that Ukraine attempted to strike a residence used by President Vladimir Putin in northwestern Russia with a barrage of 91 long-range drones late Sunday and early Monday. Ukrainian officials have rejected the accusation, calling it a provocation intended to undermine ongoing diplomatic discussions.
Russian Air Force Maj. Gen. Alexander Romanenkov said on Wednesday that the drones were launched from Ukraine’s Sumy and Chernihiv regions. Speaking at a briefing where questions were not permitted, he displayed a map purporting to show the flight paths of the drones before Russian air defenses intercepted them over several regions, including Bryansk, Tver, Smolensk and Novgorod. The claims could not be independently verified.
Ukraine’s air force reported that Russia fired 127 drones at Ukrainian territory overnight, saying air defenses shot down 101 of them. Separately, Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces destroyed 86 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions, the Black Sea and the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula.
According to Russian local authorities, debris from a Ukrainian drone attack sparked a fire at an oil refinery in the southern Krasnodar region, but the blaze was quickly extinguished and caused no reported casualties.
As both sides trade accusations and continue launching aerial attacks, civilians in cities like Odesa remain caught in the middle, facing damaged homes, unreliable power supplies and the constant threat of further strikes, even as diplomatic efforts struggle to gain traction.
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