Attacks on Odesa and Melitopol during the Ukraine war

• 5 Ukrainian drones cut electricity to 1.5 million Saturday.
• Ukraine claims Iran produced Russia’s Odessa drones.
• Russia-installed Zaporizhia Ukraine shot 2 and hit 4.

Both sides in the conflict have launched attacks on southern Ukraine, with Russia using drones to target Odessa and Ukraine retaliating from Melitopol.

The Ukrainian army claimed to have shot down 10 drones on Saturday, but an additional five struck electrical infrastructure, knocking out electricity for about 1.5 million people.

Later, the mayor of Melitopol, who was exiled, claimed that a Ukrainian strike had been conducted on the Russian-controlled city.

A large fire was visible in pictures posted by a Moscow-installed official there.

According to Ukrainian officials, Russia used drones built in Iran in its drone strike on the Ukrainian port city of Odesa.

“The situation in the Odesa region is very difficult,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly video address. “Unfortunately the hits were critical, so it takes more than just time to restore electricity. It doesn’t take hours, but a few days.”

Moscow has been employing heavy missile and drone assaults against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure since October.

Pro-Moscow officials in Melitopol reported that a Ukrainian missile attack left two persons dead and 10 injured.

“Air defense systems destroyed two missiles, four reached their targets,” Yevgeny Balitsky, the Russia-installed governor of the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region, said on the Telegram messaging app.

He added that a “recreation center” where people were dining had been destroyed in the attack, and that Ukrainian forces had used US-supplied Himars rocket launchers.

The counteroffensive by Ukraine has been greatly aided by the employment of this weapon, which has been employed to target areas away from the front lines, such as Russia’s command centers.

The exiled mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, claimed that numerous “invaders” had been killed.

Since the beginning of March, Melitopol has been occupied and has become a key logistical base for the Russian forces in the southeast.

Strategically situated between Mariupol to the east, Kherson and the Dnipro River to the west, and Crimea to the south, the city lies in the Zaporizhzhia region.

Winter has arrived, but according to Ukraine, its operations to recover occupied land are still ongoing.

Most of the fighting in recent weeks has occurred in the country’s east, particularly in the area of the Donetsk region’s city of Bakhmut.

However, on Saturday night, President Zelensky’s advisor Oleksiy Arestovych suggested that Melitopol might be a key location for Ukrainian forces.

“If Melitopol falls, the entire defence line all the way to Kherson collapses,” he said in an interview.

If that happened, he added, “Ukrainian forces would gain a direct route to Crimea,” the peninsula Russia invaded and annexed in 2014 and that the Ukrainians have vowed to retake.

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