A Ukrainian missile attack hit a strategic shipyard in Russian-annexed Crimea on Wednesday, wounding 24 people, damaging two ships undergoing repairs and setting part of the facility on fire, Russian authorities reported.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Ukraine targeted the shipyard in Sevastopol with 10 cruise missiles and three unmanned boats, and that Russian air defenses destroyed seven of the missiles and all the boats. The shipyard serves as the main base for Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
Meanwhile, the Ukraine presidential office said that Russian attacks killed at least three civilians and injured another 14 across the country. One of the assaults was a pre-dawn attack in southern Ukraine’s Odesa region that damaged port and civilian infrastructure in the region’s Izmail district, a hub for Ukrainian grain shipments on the Danube River.
The United Nations said Wednesday that such attacks on civilian infrastructure must stop.
“Today’s strike on Ukrainian ports was the 21st of such attacks since Russia’s decision to terminate the Black Sea Initiative less than two months ago,” U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine Denise Brown said in a statement. “The consequences of this brutal and relentless pattern of Russian attacks are catastrophic for the people of Ukraine and the 345 million people facing hunger worldwide.”
Overall, Russia hit 10 cities and villages in the Donetsk region on Wednesday, with other attacks in the Zaporizhzhia region and Kherson.
Ukraine has increasingly launched attacks in the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has vowed to reclaim the territory even as much of the ground fighting with Russian troops has been centered in eastern Ukraine as part of Kyiv’s counteroffensive.
Ukraine said Monday it had recaptured strategic gas and oil drilling platforms in the Black Sea that Russia seized in 2015. Moscow’s forces have used the platforms for electronic warfare equipment and to launch helicopters, and Ukraine said getting control of them would eventually help it regain Crimea.
Ukraine's RBC-Ukraine news outlet, citing unnamed sources in Ukrainian military intelligence, reported that a Russian amphibious landing ship and a submarine were damaged in Wednesday’s Sevastopol attack. Some Russian messaging app channels made the same claim. The Russian Defense Ministry said its damaged warships would be fully repaired and return to naval service.
As is often the case, Ukrainian officials had no immediate comments on the attack, but in what appeared to be a tacit claim of responsibility, Ukraine's air force chief posted a picture of the burning shipyard and praised Ukrainian forces for their work.
Kyiv has acknowledged past attacks on Crimea but has avoided claiming responsibility for drone attacks on Moscow and other regions of Russia.
Some information in this article came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
