Three killed in overnight attacks on Russian, Ukrainian port cities

Russia’s Novorossiysk ‘endured a horrific night’, with a child killed and dozens of buildings damaged, says local mayor.

Russia and Ukraine have traded deadly overnight drone attacks, killing three people in Ukraine’s southern port city of Kherson and Russia’s Black Sea port city of Novorossiysk, according to regional officials.

A Ukrainian drone attack on Novorossiysk overnight Tuesday into Wednesday killed a child, injured another child and woman, and damaged dozens of buildings, including homes, reported mayor Andrei Kravchenko.

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Drone strikes also damaged the ⁠Novorossiysk ⁠grain terminal, according to the terminal’s owner, Demetra Holding.

“Novorossiysk endured a horrific night,” Kravchenko wrote in a post on Telegram.

In the broader Krasnodar region, where Novorossiysk is located, eight people were injured, according to the regional governor, Veniamin Kondratyev.

Elsewhere, Ukrainian drones damaged several homes in Russia-occupied Crimea, said local governor Mikhail Razvozhayev.

Russia’s ⁠Ministry of Defence ⁠said ‌it downed and ⁠destroyed a total of 502 Ukrainian ⁠drones overnight.

Two killed in Ukraine’s Kherson

In Ukraine, a Russian attack using Shahed drones killed two people and injured at least two others, including an elderly woman, according to the head of the region’s military administration, Oleksandr Prokudin.

In Ukraine’s southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, a Russian attack triggered a blaze at a shopping mall, according to regional governor Ivan Fedorov. He shared pictures and a video of a building on fire.

The attack cut off ⁠power for some 1,200 consumers in Zaporizhzhia, Fedorov added.

A separate Russian attack on Odesa, Ukraine’s ⁠largest seaport, damaged infrastructure there, said the head of the city’s military administration, Serhiy Lysak.

Russia’s Defence Ministry claimed it hit ⁠a fuel depot in ⁠the port of Odesa, which ⁠it said ⁠was used ⁠to supply the Ukrainian army.

Moscow has recently intensified strikes on Ukraine’s food, agriculture and warehouse facilities, in response to Kyiv’s attacks on Russian ‌energy, port and logistics hubs.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday that Kyiv had handed proposals to US negotiators for a plan ‌to ‌end the war, which started with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

According to Ukrainian officials quoted by The Financial Times, Kyiv has also committed to ⁠halting ⁠drone strikes on oil tankers using Russia’s port of Novorossiysk after ⁠a request at the end of last month from United States Vice President JD Vance.

Talks to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which began in 2022, have largely stalled since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran.

Ukraine has repeatedly called for a ceasefire after years of fighting. Russia says it wants a settlement, but any solution must involve Ukraine fully ceding four regions Moscow claims, as well as resolving the conflict’s “root causes”.