Russia has escalated its strikes against the southern Ukrainian region of Odesa, leaving scores without power and once again raising fears for the fate of the region’s maritime infrastructure.
Moscow was conducting “systematic” attacks on the region, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba told journalists. Last week he said that the war “possibly have moved to Odesa”.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said the repeated attacks were aimed at cutting off Ukraine’s access to maritime logistics and that they were damaging for the civilian population.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, in December, previously warned that Ukraine will be cut off from the sea as vengeance for drone attacks on tankers of Russia’s “shadow fleet” in the Black Sea.
“Shadow fleet” is a reference to the hundreds of tankers employed by Russia to evade Western sanctions that followed its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
On Monday evening, shelling hit the port in Odesa, damaging a civilian vessel, the regional governor said.
#Ukraine #Russia #War #News
This evening, the enemy again attacked Odesa with strike UAVs. As a result of the attack, the port infrastructure and a civilian vessel were damaged, — the head of the Odesa OVA, Oleh Kiper.Amazon ref link: https://t.co/FyOcVk8NJI pic.twitter.com/MvqMTZtKJm
— BreakingNews World (@Breking911World) December 23, 2025
It was the most recent in a series of houndreds of strikes that have knocked power supplies out for days and inflicted casualties.
Strikes on Sunday night knocked out power to 120,000 people and set a major port on fire, destroying dozens of containers filled with flour and vegetable oil.
A ballistic missile attack on the Pivdenniy port east of Odesa last week killed eight people and wounded at least 30.
An earlier attack this week killed a woman who was in a car with her three children and caused the temporary closure of the only bridge from Ukraine to Moldova through the Odesa region.
Zelensky said a new commander of the air force for the region would be appointed in the coming days, after Dmytro Karpenko was sacked at the weekend.
The port of Odesa has long been a lifeline for the country’s economy. It is the third largest city in Ukraine, after Kyiv and Kharkiv. It currently has strategic significance because it is the only seaport in Ukraine which cannot be blocked or destroyed by Russian amphibious forces; all the other ports of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Mykolayiv regions are being occupied by Russia.
Wheat and corn are two of the country’s biggest exports, and even amid the war Ukraine remains among the world’s top suppliers of those crops.
Since August 2023, Odesa is the starting point for a key corridor that now enables it to export grain without moving it across the territory of Ukraine and along the coastlines of Romania and Bulgaria to Turkey.
Zelensky, who has previously accused Russia of “sprinkling chaos” on the people of Odesa, added: “Everyone must understand that without pressure on Russia, they will not stop real aggression”.
His comments coincided with the latest round of US-led diplomatic manoeuvres in Miami. While the meeting produced optimistic-sounding joint statements, and the United States also hosted separate one-on-ones with both Ukrainian and Russian delegates, it did not appear to make Washington’s hoped-for progress toward ending Moscow’s nearly four-year war against its smaller neighbor.
‘Objective was to align positions’ “The focus of the meeting was on getting positions aligned,” said the US President has a special envoy, Steve Witkoff.”My Ukrainian counterpart Mr Umerov and I met in Minsk today. The plan differs from a US proposal put forward in November, which was perceived as being more favourable to Moscow.
Even before Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev, who conducted back-channel peace talks with the Americans in Florida, arrived back in Moscow from that US state, Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters that the new Western and Ukrainian edits to the plan would not bolster prospects to end the hostilities.
On Monday, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said EU countries had a “strong desire” to sabotage any potential Russia-US deals on Ukraine that would serve to “in general prevent Russia-American relations getting healthier”.
He also claimed that European nations were “possessed by a maniacal” fear over the prospect of a Russian attack. Russia was prepared to enshrine in a legally binding document that it did not plan to attack the EU or Nato, Ryabkov said, repeating earlier remarks by Putin.
“We’ve never even thought about that, and if they want to tell other people something, they can put it in writing and send it to us,” Putin said in November.
