The charred remains of an apartment building hit by Russian missiles in Odesa
(Picture: UKRAINE EMERGENCY MINISTRY PRESS)At least 18 people have been killed after Russian missiles struck an apartment in the port city of Odesa, Ukrainian officials have said.
The attack came just hours after Russian forces abandoned the strategic Black Sea outpost of Snake Island, marking a major victory for Kyiv.
One missile struck a nine-storey building in the town of Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi about 1 am on Friday, the Ukrainian emergencies ministry said. It also caused a fire in an attached store building.
Emergency services were continuing to search the rubble on Friday for survivors after part of the building collapsed.
Serhiy Bratchuk, spokesperson for the Odesa regional administration, said another missile hit a resort facility. At least three people were killed in the attack, including two children.
Thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed since Vladimir Putin launched an invasion of the country on February 24, with Russian forces accused of indiscriminate shelling of residential areas. Earlier this week, 18 civilians died after missile strikes on a supermarket in the central town of Kremenchuk.
Moscow on Thursday claimed it had withdrawn its troops from Snake Island as a “gesture of goodwill” to show it was not obstructing humanitarian attempts to open a corridor allowing grain to be shipped out of Ukraine. Seizing control of the island is key to resuming the export of the country’s grain to the rest of the world.
Ukraine’s military claimed it forced the Russians to flee in two small speedboats following a barrage of Ukrainian artillery and missile strikes,
Foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba mocked Moscow’s response, tweeting: “They always downplay their defeats this way.”
And Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky hailed an importance strategic victory, saying: “It does not yet guarantee security. It does not yet ensure that the enemy will not come back.
“But this significantly limits the actions of the occupiers. Step by step, we will push them back from our sea, our land and our sky.”
In contrast, Ukrainian forces were desperately hanging on in the eastern city of Lysychansk amid continued Russian artillery strikes.
"The superiority in fire power of the occupiers is still very much in evidence," Mr Zelensky said. "They have simply brought in all their reserves to hit us."
Russian forces have been trying to encircle Lysychansk as part of a renewed offensive launched in the Donbas earlier this year, following a failed attempt to capture central and eastern regions of the country.
In other developments, US President Joe Biden announced £660 million in new weapons for Ukraine at a Nato summit in Madrid.
"I don’t know how it’s going to end, but it will not end with Russia defeating Ukraine," Mr Biden told a news conference. "We are going to support Ukraine for as long as it takes."
During the summit, Nato also announced it would deploy more troops and weapons into the territories of its members in Eastern Europe and designated Russia “the most significant and direct threat to peace on the continent.
