The Ukrainian port of Odesa was battered Monday as Russian forces launched missile attacks – including hypersonic rockets – to mark its biggest patriotic holiday – Victory Day. Ukraine military said seven missiles – three of which were hypersonic rockets – had been fired at a shopping centre and a warehouse. One person has died and five have been wounded, AFP reported.
The hypersonic rockets used were the dreaded Kinzhal, or ‘dagger’ air-to-surface missile first used in this conflict in March to destroy an ammunitions stockpile in western Ukraine.
The Kinzhal can fly at five times the speed of sound and has a range of 2,000 km (1,240 miles). Russia can launch the missile from outside Ukrainian airspace, which eliminates the risk of anti-aircraft fire.
Fired from a Russian supersonic bomber – according to Ukraine think tank Center for Defense Strategies – it can carry a nuclear payload of 480 kg.
What is Kinzhal, Russia’s advanced hypersonic missile used in Ukraine?
Today’s strikes came on the day president Vladimir Putin marked Russia’s Victory Day – a national holiday commemorating the former Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.
Analysts had expected Putin to use the day to trumpet some kind of victory in Ukraine or announce an escalation, but he did neither.
As Putin marks Victory Day, his troops make little gains in Ukraine
Instead, he sought to justify the war again as a necessary response.
“The danger was rising by the day,” Putin said, “Russia has given a pre-emptive response to aggression. It was forced, timely, and the only correct decision.”
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Putin has long bristled at NATO’s creep eastward into former Soviet republics. Ukraine and its Western allies have denied the country posed any threat.
Meanwhile, Ukraine officials said they had recovered the bodies of 44 civilians from a building in Izyum in the northeast that was destroyed weeks ago.
“This is another horrible war crime of the Russian occupiers against the civilian population!” Oleh Synehubov, the regional head, said on social media.
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Izyum lies on a key route to the eastern industrial region of the Donbas, now the focus of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Synehubov did not say specifically where the building was.
Intense fighting also raged at a steel plant in Mariupol, where Russian forces sought to take the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance and in which at least 100 civilians in addition to local fighters have entrenched themselves.
One of the Ukrainian fighters said they were still defending the city.
Valeri Paditel, who heads the border guards in the Donetsk region, said the fighters were “doing everything to make those who defend the city… proud”.
Ukraine has also warned Russia could target chemical industries; the claim wasn’t immediately explained but Russia has targeted oil depots and other industrial sites during a brutal war that has dragged on for nearly three months.
With input from AP, AFP, Reuters
