Eight people died across Ukraine during the night and early morning, according to local authorities.
In the Black Sea port of Odessa, three people were killed and three others were injured as a result of a “massive” drone strike, the head of the region, Oleg Kiper, said. It was the fifth day that Russia struck the region.
In the city of Sumy in the north-east of the country, three people were killed and 17 were injured as a result of shelling by guided aerial bombs, said acting Mayor Artem Kabzar. Two more people died in the central part of Dnipropetrovs’k region and Zaporozhye region in the south of the country.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military said its drones shot down 20 Russian vessels, including 17 oil tankers, in the Black Sea overnight.
Russia’s defense ministry confirmed it had attacked Odessa, saying it had deliberately struck port infrastructure “used to unload oil and lubricants”.
Writing on Telegram, Kiper accused Russia of deliberately targeting civilians and said residents were killed and injured when a Russian missile hit a high-rise apartment building.
He added that an uninhabited house and a gas pipeline were also damaged.
In a report released Tuesday, the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said at least 293 civilians were killed and 1,990 were injured in Ukraine in June.
It said long-range weapons – such as missiles and drones – “remain the leading cause of civilian casualties”, accounting for 45% of deaths.
“Most of the losses from these weapons occurred far from the front line in urban centers such as Kyiv and Dnipro,” UN observers note.
In its statement, the Russian military claims that it is targeting sites related to the production of military equipment and the transportation of goods.
Russia’s attacks in recent days have targeted Ukraine’s deep-sea Black Sea ports in the wider Odessa area, which handle much of the country’s grain and other cargo and are vital to its wartime economy.
This happened after intense attacks on Russian ships in the Sea of Azov, which is located between Moscow’s annexed Crimea and Russia.
The Ukrainian attacks have forced Russia, the world’s largest grain exporter, to restrict shipping in the Sea of Azov, a route through which about a quarter of its grain exports pass, Reuters news agency reported.
