Odesa has been badly damaged after a night of mass Russian strikes, as Ukraine was hit by over 200 missiles and drones, the country’s officials reported. Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday that eight people had been wounded in Odesa following overnight attacks. According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, around 219 missiles and drones attacked the country last night.
Among them were seven ballistic, anti-ship and anti-radar missiles and 202 Shahed drones. Air defences shot down 174 drones and five cruise missiles. The Ukrainian president also expressed concerns that North Korea is preparing to send up to 50,000 troops for deployment in Russia, amid fresh warnings that Moscow could order an attack on a Nato country within weeks.
Zelensky claimed Pyongyang is planning to study the lessons of the war in Ukraine and could present a threat to other states in the Asian direction, urging closer cooperation between Kyiv and South Korea. In a separate development, Ukraine paid tribute to Oleksiy Yukov, a volunteer who spent over two decades recovering bodies of civilians and soldiers killed by war. Yukov, 40, founded the organisation known as Platsdarm, or Bridgehead, and became known as a ‘collector of souls.’ An Orthodox Christian service was held at the Cathedral of Saint Volodymyr in central Kyiv, where thousands of people gathered to pay their respects following his death in a landmine explosion during a recovery mission on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Kyiv launched another drone strike on a Wildberries warehouse in Yekaterinburg, Russia, marking the 20th such attack since 18 July as part of a three-week campaign to ‘bring the war home’ to ordinary Russians. Satellite imagery indicates that these Ukrainian attacks have collectively destroyed one-fifth of the Russian online retailer Wildberries’ total storage capacity. Turkey’s foreign minister Hakan Fidan said that Ankara had conveyed to Russia and Ukraine that they should declare a moratorium on their attacks in the Black Sea.
Fidan added that Turkey had implemented certain security measures of its own but did not elaborate further. A drone likely from Ukraine exploded in Bulgaria near a gas pipeline, with no casualties or damage reported. Bulgaria and Romania are both members of Nato and the European Union.
Germany’s interior minister Alexander Dobrindt warned of daily ‘hybrid warfare’ after a suspected drone attack at Leipzig/Halle Airport. Dobrindt told the newspaper Bild am Sonntag that foreign powers wanted to subdue Germany politically and socially by stirring up fear there. He highlighted the expansion of drone research in Germany as part of the response to the new threats.
