The Russian Defense Ministry announced today that Russian missiles destroyed a runway and a hangar of aircraft containing foreign weapons, at a military airport near the Ukrainian city of Odessa.
According to the statement, the destroyed weapons were given to Ukraine by the US and European countries.
The ministry stressed that Russian forces used high-precision Onyx missiles to hit the airport, after Ukraine accused Russia of destroying a newly constructed airstrip in the central Odessa airport.
Odessa regional governor Maxim Marchenko said Russia had used a Bastion missile fired from Crimea.
The airport can no longer operate, according to the Ukrainian army. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has vowed to rebuild it, stressing in a videotaped message late Saturday that “Odessa will never forget Russia’s attitude towards it.”
There has been no official response to the attack from Moscow, whose forces have launched sporadic attacks on Ukraine’s third largest city, where eight people were recently killed in one of them, according to Kyiv.
The goal of the Russian army in the Ukrainian south is to create a “land bridge” with Crimea, while intensifying its efforts in the east to gain full control of Donbass, where the supporters of the Moscow separatists already control most of Luhansk and Donetsk.
The Russian ministry added that Russian air defense systems shot down two Ukrainian Su-24m bombers over the Kharkiv region overnight.
Attacks in Hersonissos as well
Russian military forces fired rockets into southern and eastern Ukraine on Saturday, according to Kyiv. On the other hand, Moscow today reported the death of civilians from shelling by the Ukrainian army in villages of Kherson. Meanwhile, in Mariupol, the first women and children were removed from Azovstal steel plantwhere Ukrainian soldiers and civilians remain trapped for days.
Moscow has concentrated its military operations in the south and east of Ukraine, after failed to occupy the capital Kyiv in the attack it has unleashed for the past nine weeks, leveling cities, causing thousands of deaths and forcing more than 5 million people to seek refuge abroad.
The Russian military has occupied Kherson, about 100 kilometers north of the annexed Crimean peninsula, and controls most of Mariupol, a strategically important port city in the Sea of ​​Azov.
Russia announced the capture of Mariupol on April 21, while hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians took refuge in the huge Azovstal steel plant. The United Nations has called for an agreement to evacuate the plant through a “humanitarian corridor”. On Saturday, it became known by a Ukrainian commander of the Azov Order that 20 women and children managed to leave the steel plant.
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