EU closes gas ration deal amid fears of Russian shutdown.
Russia targeted Ukraine’s southern Black Sea regions of Odesa and Mykolaiv with airstrikes on Tuesday, hitting private buildings and port infrastructure with missiles fired from long-range bombers, the Ukrainian military said. In the Odesa region, buildings in coastal villages were hit and caught fire, the Southern Ukraine Operational Command said on Facebook. In the Mykolaiv region, port infrastructure was targeted despite agreements to allow grain shipments from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports to resume. Hours after the strikes, a Moscow-based official in southern Ukraine said the Odesa and Mykolayiv regions would soon be “liberated” from Russian forces, as would the already-occupied Kherson region further east. “The Kherson region and the city of Kherson have been liberated forever,” Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported, citing Moscow-appointed regional official Kirill Stremusov. A local resident walks among the ruins of residential buildings destroyed by a Russian missile attack in Zatoka settlement, Odesa region, Ukraine, on Tuesday. Buildings in coastal villages were hit by Russian missiles and caught fire, Ukraine’s Southern Operations Command said. (Igor Tkachenko/Reuters) While Ukrainian officials spoke of a possible counterattack in the south, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said on Tuesday there was no evidence that a Ukrainian warship and a stockpile of anti-ship missiles had docked in the port of Odessa, as Moscow claimed when it struck the site over the weekend. The British ministry said Russia sees Ukraine’s use of anti-ship missiles as a “key threat” limiting its fleet in the Black Sea. “This has significantly undermined the overall invasion plan, as Russia cannot realistically attempt an amphibious assault to capture Odessa,” the military said. “Russia will continue to prioritize efforts to degrade and destroy Ukraine’s anti-ship capability.” He added that “Russia’s targeting procedures are very likely to be systematically undermined by out-of-date intelligence, poor planning and a top-down approach to operations.”
“There is not a single safe place left” in Donetsk
In other military developments, Russian shelling over the past 24 hours has killed at least three civilians and wounded eight others in Ukraine, Ukraine’s presidential office said on Tuesday. In the eastern Donetsk region, where fighting has been concentrated in recent weeks, shelling continued across the front line, with Russian forces targeting some of the region’s largest cities, Bakhmut, Avdiyevka and Toretsk, the presidential office said. Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko accused Russian troops of using cluster munitions and repeated his call for civilians to evacuate. “There is not a single safe place, everything is being bombed,” Kirilenko said in televised comments. “But there are still evacuation routes for the civilian population.” The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington, DC-based think tank, said the Russians are using mercenaries from the shadowy Wagner group to seize the Vuhledar power plant on the northern outskirts of the village of Novoluhanske in the Bakhmut region. A Ukrainian soldier is seen inside a tank in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region on Tuesday. (Anatolii Stepanov/AFP/Getty Images) However, Russian forces have made “limited gains” there, according to Ukraine’s General Staff. Russia’s main focus has been on capturing Bakhmut, which the Russian military needs to press its assault on the main Ukrainian strongholds of Donetsk, the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. “Russian forces have made marginal gains south of Bakhmut, but it is unlikely that they will be able to effectively use these advances to take full control of Bakhmut itself,” the Institute for the Study of War said.
“Everything is being shot” in Kharkiv
Russian forces continued to launch strikes on civilian infrastructure in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, and the surrounding region in the country’s northeast. Kharkiv Governor Oleh Sinyekhubov said strikes in the city resumed early Tuesday and damaged a car dealership. “The Russians are deliberately targeting objects of civilian infrastructure — hospitals, schools, movie theaters,” Synyehubov told Ukrainian television. “Everything is being shot at, even humanitarian aid queues, so we urge people to avoid mass gatherings.”
Stopped diplomacy
On the diplomatic front, Russia’s top diplomat reiterated his insistence that Moscow was ready to hold talks with Ukraine to end the war, although he once again claimed that Kiev’s Western allies oppose a deal. “We have never refused to hold talks, because everyone knows that any hostilities end at the negotiating table,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday during a trip to Uganda. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov attends a press conference after talks with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni in Entebbe, Uganda, on Tuesday. (Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs/Reuters) He also said that negotiations have not progressed further since the meeting between the two sides in Istanbul in late March. Responding to Lavrov’s comment on Monday that Moscow’s primary goal in Ukraine is to free its people from its “unacceptable regime,” German Foreign Minister Analena Baerbock said Moscow wants “the complete subjugation of Ukraine and its people ». “We have to be prepared for this war – which Russia is waging with absolute brutality and waging in a way that no one else will last for months,” Baerbock said during a visit to Prague.
