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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
World
Ryan Merrifield

Grieving husband pays tribute to mum and baby killed in Russian missile strike on Odessa

A young mum and her three-month-old baby who were killed during a Russian missile attack in Odessa have been pictured.

Valeria Hlodan and daughter Kira were among eight civilians to die - along with 18 others left injured - after the rocket hit multiple residential buildings and a military compound in the Ukrainian port city on Saturday.

Husband Yuriy posted a photo of his wife and daughter in a heartbreaking tribute on social media.

He wrote: "My dear ones, Kingdom of Heaven! You are in our hearts!"

The same photo - which shows Valeria beaming as she bottle feeds her baby - was also shared on the official Ukrainian parliament Twitter account.

The tweet said: "A charming young mother and her three-month-old child.

"Their lives were taken by Russia today when a Russian rocket hit a residential building in Odesa....RIP, our angels."

Valeria had posted on Instagram announcing Kira's birth and declaring she'd found a "new level of happiness" - which has resurfaced following her death

It shows the mum-to-be holding her pregnancy bump and is captioned: "Those were the best 40 weeks. Our girl is a month old now. Papa gave her her first flowers. It’s a new level of happiness."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's chief of staff Andriy Permak confirmed Saturday's attack.

The last big strike on or near Odessa was in early April.

"The only aim of Russian missile strikes on Odessa is terror," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter.

Russia has denied targeting civilians in its "special military operation" that began on February 24.

Emergency service workers extinguish fire after the missile strike (via REUTERS)

Meanwhile, in Mariupol Russia resumed its assault on the last Ukrainian defenders holed up in a giant steel works, a Ukrainian official said on Saturday.

The attack comes just days after Moscow declared victory in the southern port city and said its forces did not need to take the plant.

Russian forces were hitting the Azovstal complex with air strikes and trying to storm it, presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said, adding "the enemy is trying to strangle the final resistance of Mariupol's defenders".

The residential building damaged by a missile strike (REUTERS)

The biggest battle of the conflict has raged for weeks as Russia seeks to capture a city seen as vital to its attempts to link the eastern Donbas region with Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Moscow seized in 2014.

A Russian general, Rustam Minnekayev, said on Friday Moscow wanted control of the whole of southern Ukraine, not just Donbas.

Ukraine said the comments indicated Russia had wider goals than its declared aim of demilitarising and "de-nazifying" the country.

Kyiv and the West Ukraine call the invasion an unjustified war of aggression.

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