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KYIV – Explosions rocked the strategic Ukrainian port city of Odessa on Sunday, as a top United Nations official headed to Moscow to try to secure a “humanitarian ceasefire” and after evidence emerged of possible civilian killings around Kyiv.
Thick plumes of black smoke rose from several areas on the historic Black Sea port, after air strikes shook the city at about 6am (0300 GMT) but the Ukrainian army said no one was killed.
Russia’s Defence Ministry confirmed the attack, saying “high-precision sea and air-based missiles destroyed an oil refinery and three storage facilities for fuel and lubricants”.
The ministry claimed the targets were supplying fuel to Ukrainian troops.
Anton Herashchenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian interior minister, said: “Fires were reported in some areas. Some of the missiles were shot down by air defence.”
The strikes came with Greece’s Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias expected in the city to deliver humanitarian aid to the municipal authorities.
UN chief Antonio Guterres' humanitarian envoy Martin Griffiths was meanwhile seeking a halt in the fighting, which Ukraine estimates has left 20,000 people dead, and forced more than 10 million to flee for their lives.
He will fly on to Kyiv from Moscow. Both Russia and Ukraine have agreed to meet him, Guterres said yesterday.
In the ravaged city of Bucha, just outside the Ukrainian capital, the bodies of nearly 300 civilians were found in mass graves after Russian troops withdrew.
AFP reporters saw at least 20 bodies, all in civilian clothing, strewn across a single street. One had his hands tied behind his back with a white cloth, and his Ukrainian passport left open beside his body.
“All these people were shot,” Bucha’s mayor Anatoly Fedoruk said, adding that 280 other bodies had been buried in mass graves in the town. “These are the consequences of Russian occupation.”
UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said she was “appalled by atrocities in Bucha and other towns in Ukraine” and promised the perpetrators would be held to account before an international war crimes tribunal.
The International Criminal Court has already opened a probe into possible war crimes committed in Ukraine, and several Western leaders, including US President Joe Biden, have accused Russia’s Vladimir Putin of being a “war criminal”.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has also alleged that Russian soldiers planted mines and other booby traps as they withdrew from northern Ukraine.
In a video address yesterday, he warned returning residents of tripwires and other dangers.
“We are moving forward. Moving carefully and everyone who returns to this area must also be very careful,” he said.
Meanwhile, in an attempt to raise economic pressure on Russia, the Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania announced yesterday that they had stopped all imports of Russian natural gas. – AFP, April 3, 2022