Russian forces kill several in Ukraine, launch ‘brutal’ attack in Odesa
Get the Geopolitics newsletter
Daily geopolitics — wars, elections, sanctions, the diplomatic moves that move markets. Free.
- Russian forces struck an apartment building in Kharkiv's Saltivskyi district, killing two men aged 50 and 66 and wounding at least 21 people, with photos showing a gaping hole across four storeys
- Zelenskyy condemned an "absolutely wicked" attack near a Pavlohrad shopping mall that wounded nine people, including four children, in the Dnipropetrovsk region
- Russia launched ballistic, antiship, and anti-radar missiles plus more than 200 Shahed drones at Odesa overnight, hitting 22 locations, injuring at least 8, and damaging residential buildings and the port
- Zelenskyy accused Moscow of "systematically waging war against global food security" by targeting Odesa's grain-exporting port and said repair work was underway to restore power
- Odesa Governor Oleh Kiper previously reported that port attacks killed 28 people in the first three weeks of July alone
- Russia also struck two oil refineries in the northeastern Sumy region, per Reuters, while attacks were reported across Zhytomyr, Mykolaiv, Kyiv, Kherson, Dnipro, Zaporizhia, and Donetsk regions
- Ukrainian drone strikes killed three civilians overnight in Russia's Belgorod region, per the TASS news agency
Why it matters: Zelenskyy explicitly frames the Odesa port strikes as an assault on global grain supply chains rather than a military operation, with Governor Kiper's 28-death tally from just three weeks of July underscoring the scale — this reframes the conflict's stakes from a bilateral war into a potential food-security crisis affecting countries far beyond Ukraine.
Ask SkimNews
