Ukraine’s air force and officials said early on Tuesday that Russia had launched air strikes overnight in southern and eastern Ukraine, using drones and possibly ballistic missiles.
Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Senkevich said a fire broke out at one of the port’s facilities late Monday.
The city provides access to Ukraine on the Black Sea.
Senkevich described the fire on Telegram as extremely serious, adding that more details would be announced later.
The Ukrainian Air Force stated via Telegram that the port of Odessa in the south of the country and the regions of Mykolaiv, Donetsk, Kherson, Zaporizhia and Dnepropetrovsk face the threat of attacks by Russian drones.
According to reports, the Russian forces are using ballistic weapons to attack the regions of Poltava, Cherkassy, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkiv and Kirovohrad.
Alerts of air strikes rang out in many parts of Ukraine for hours, before stopping at around 04:30 am local time (01:30 GMT).
Ole Kiber, head of the military administration in the Odessa region, said that the region’s air defense systems intervened to repel several waves of Russian drone attacks.
Serhiy Prachuk, a spokesman for the military department in Odessa, said via Telegram that details of the attack would be announced at a later time.
There was no immediate comment from Russia on the attack.
In addition, the Russian army thwarted, last night, a Ukrainian attempt to attack targets in the Crimea, using 28 drones, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense.
On Tuesday, the Russian Ministry of Defense said in a statement, “Tonight, an attempt by the Kiev regime to carry out an attack by 28 drones on targets in the territory of the Crimea was thwarted”.
It indicated that the Russian air defense shot down 17 drones, and the remaining 11 were neutralized by means of electronic warfare.
The Russian Defense ministry added that there were no injuries or damages as a result of the failed attack.
The President of the Republic of Crimea, Sergey Aksenov, announced that 28 drones launched towards the east of the peninsula were shot down last night.
Aksenov wrote on Telegram, “Tonight, air defense systems shot down 9 drones, and 19 other drones were neutralized using electronic warfare means, without any casualties being recorded”.
The Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday, that Moscow will respond to the attack on the Crimean Bridge, and that the Russian Ministry of Defense is preparing appropriate proposals.
Putin said, during a meeting on the situation on the Crimean bridge, “The response from Russia will be, of course, and the Ministry of Defense is preparing appropriate proposals”.
Putin added: “In conclusion, I would like to say and repeat that what happened is another terrorist act of the Kiev regime”.
Early Monday, the Crimean Bridge, which connects Russia to the Crimea peninsula, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014, was bombed.
Moscow described the attack as a strike carried out by Ukrainian naval unmanned vehicles and vowed to respond.
In addition, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that Ukraine is actively cooperating with the International Criminal Court to hold “Russian criminals” accountable, and calls on all the court’s 123 member states to comply with the court’s request to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Commissioner for Children’s Rights in Russia, Maria Lvova Belova.
Kuleba added, at the United Nations headquarters in New York, during a ministerial round table dedicated to the strategic role of the International Criminal Court in the next decade, “We’re all witnessing countless examples of crimes that occur directly and fall within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, where Ukraine is facing the greatest aggression since World War II”.
“Ukraine appreciates the participation of the International Criminal Court in the investigation of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed by the Russians in our country,” Kuleba stressed.
“Justice allows for the prevention of future crimes, while impunity, as we all know, encourages the commission of crimes, and we have no moral right to allow this after thousands of innocent Ukrainians have suffered under Russian aggression… All the guilty, without exception, must be brought to justice,” Kuleba said.
The Ukrainian minister described the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue arrest warrants against Putin and Belova on charges of the war crime of illegal deportation of more than 19,000 Ukrainian children from the occupied Ukrainian territories to the Russian Federation, as a “defining moment”.
“We call on all 123 member states of the International Criminal Court, which have ratified the Rome Statute, to comply with the court’s request to arrest Putin and Maria Lvova Belova,” Kuleba added.
