At least three people, including a two-year-old girl and her mother, were killed in an overnight Russian drone strike on the southern Ukrainian port of Odesa, Ukraine said on April 6.
On the same day, Kyiv also said it had hit a Russian missile carrier in an attack on the port of Novorossiisk.
At least 15 others were injured in the Odesa attack, including a pregnant woman and two children, a 7-month-old boy and a 2-year-old girl, Ukrainian officials reported.
Authorities in the Odesa region have declared April 6 a day of mourning for the victims of the overnight attack.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha condemned the incident, calling for tougher action against Moscow.
“Pressure on Moscow must rise, not decrease,” he wrote on X following the Odesa attack. “Russian child murderers should only face sanctions, isolation, and accountability.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on April 6 that Russia launched over 140 drones overnight, hitting Odesa and several other regions, damaging residential buildings, a kindergarten, and a district power substation.
“Sixteen people have been wounded. Eleven of them have been hospitalized by our medics, including a pregnant woman and two children. The youngest is not even a year old,” Zelenskyy said in his post on X.
Zelenskyy urged allies to strengthen air defenses, warning that “Russia has no intention of stopping.”
Elsewhere, the Ukrainian military said it struck a Russian warship in the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk as well as a drilling rig near occupied Crimea overnight.
Kyiv’s drone forces commander Robert Brovdi said the Admiral Makarov missile carrier was one of the targets of the attack.
Brovdi also shared footage purporting to show both incidents.
Russian regional authorities had earlier reported that Ukrainian drones had hit Novorossiisk, injuring at least eight people.
Several Russian-language Telegram channels, including ASTRA, reported that the Sheskharis oil terminal, a key facility in southern Russia for the storage and loading of oil and petroleum products onto tankers, was damaged as a result of the attacks on Novorossiisk.
The Sheskharis oil terminal, the largest in southern Russia, is part of Chernomortransneft, a subsidiary of the state-controlled oil pipeline company Transneft, which handles receiving, storing, and exporting oil to tankers.
Ukraine has stepped up drone attacks on Russian oil facilities in recent weeks, curtailing exports and hampering Moscow’s capacity to take advantage of a spike in global energy prices prompted by the war in Iran and Tehran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported on April 6 that it had shot down 198 Ukrainian drones since the previous evening.
