Russian forces fired cruise missiles at the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa overnight and shelling destroyed homes in the eastern Donetsk region early on Wednesday, killing at least six people and injuring more than a dozen others, regional officials said.
A Ukrainian military spokesman said Russian forces have stepped up aerial strikes in their 15-month war against Ukraine, just as the country’s troops have reported limited gains in an early counter-offensive.
In the east, Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote on Telegram that at least three people died after shelling destroyed seven homes and damaged dozens more in the cities of Kramatorsk and Konstantinovka.
In Odesa, three employees of a food warehouse were killed and seven others injured in a strike that damaged homes, a warehouse, shops and cafes, the regional administration said on Facebook.
A further six people – guards and residents of a neighbouring house – were injured.
Searchers were looking for possible survivors under the rubble, it said.
The attack on the port city, launched from the Black Sea, involved four Kalibr cruise missiles, three of which were intercepted by air defences, the administration said.
Andriy Kovalov, a spokesman for Ukraine’s General Staff, said Russian forces have increased missile and aerial strikes on Ukraine.
In a briefing, he said strikes on the Kharkiv, Donetsk and Kirovohrad regions, in addition to the Odesa region, involved Kh-22 cruise missiles, sea-launched Kalibr cruise missiles, and Iranian-made Shaheed drones. Nine were intercepted.
Mr Kovalov said Ukrainian forces made advances on several fronts of the roughly 600-mile (1,000km) front line, and fighting was continuing in or near at least two settlements in the eastern Donetsk region.
Russia has occupied and controls nearly one-fifth of Ukrainian territory.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 14 June 2023.
Find out more about Defence Intelligence's use of language: https://t.co/90P42VA3t1
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/B5dsskplYC— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) June 14, 2023
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Britain’s Ministry of Defence, which has regularly issued updates on the conflict, wrote on Twitter that southern Ukraine “has often been more permissible for Russian air operations” compared with other parts of the front.
Separately, the mayor of the central city of Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown, said the death toll from a Russian strike a day earlier which hit an apartment building has risen to 12.
