Odesa under fire as Kyiv condemns Russian ‘provocative actions’ in Black Sea

At least three people have been killed and 10 injured in more Russian missile, drone and artillery attacks on Ukraine, as Kyiv said its forces were regaining some territory in a slow-moving counteroffensive to liberate eastern and southeastern areas.

Heavy fighting continued on Monday as Kyiv condemned the Russian navy for forcing a cargo ship in the Black Sea to stop for inspection en route to a Ukrainian port, and Russia’s rouble currency fell to its lowest level against the US dollar in 16 months, highlighting the financial impact of sanctions, falling export revenues and soaring Kremlin military spending.

Ukraine said its air defences shot down eight sea-launched cruise missiles and 15 explosive “kamikaze” drones near the Black Sea port of Odesa, where at least three people were injured and several buildings badly damaged by falling debris.

Two people were killed in shelling of the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, at least one person was hurt in an artillery attack on neighbouring Kherson province, and one man was killed and six wounded in strikes on the eastern Kharkiv region.

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Russia has launched repeated missile and drone attacks on Odesa and other Ukrainian ports since withdrawing from a United Nations-brokered deal last month that allowed Kyiv to ship its grain across the Black Sea to world markets.

Moscow says its navy will now regard merchant ships sailing to or from Ukraine as potential carriers of weapons, and on Sunday a Russian warship fired warning shots at a cargo vessel sailing to the port of Izmail to make it stop for inspection. Russian soldiers then boarded the ship from a helicopter and conducted checks before allowing it to sail on.

Ukraine said on Monday that it “strongly condemns the provocative actions carried out by the Russian Federation” which “exemplified Russia’s deliberate policy of endangering the freedom of navigation and safety of commercial shipping in the Black Sea”.

The foreign ministry in Kyiv said “we call on the international community to take decisive action to prevent Russian Federation’s actions that impede the peaceful passage of vessels through the Black Sea. Russia should not be able to block international routes.”

Ukraine said on Monday that its troops were slowly pushing Russian forces back in parts of the southeast and retook 3sq km of territory last week near the eastern city of Bakhmut, where a total of about 40sq km were liberated since June.

Heavy fighting is taking place near the town of Kupiansk in Kharkiv region, where Russia claims to be clawing back land that it was forced to cede last September. Such is the intensity of fighting around Kupiansk that Kyiv is believed to have stiffened its defences there by diverting some forces from the Bakhmut area, 150km to the south.

The rouble fell past the psychologically important level of 100 to the US dollar on Monday, its lowest point since the weeks following Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The rouble has lost more than a quarter of its value against the dollar this year as sanctions caused a sharp fall in Russian energy and other exports to the West, interest rates were slashed and Kremlin spending on weapons, soldiers’ wages and compensation for those killed in Ukraine all surged.

Meanwhile, Poland detained two Russians on suspicion of spying and spreading propaganda for Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, a large part of which is now based in Belarus, Poland’s eastern neighbour.