Russian Missile Hits Odesa During World War Two Victory Day Celebrations

Illustration of the impact of Russian air strikes on Ukraine. (Wikimedia Commons/dsns.gov.ua/State Emergency Service of Ukraine)

JAKARTA - Buildings in Odesa, Ukraine were destroyed on Tuesday, a day after Kremlin troops attacked a southern Ukrainian port with missiles and Russian President Vladimir Putin presided over celebrations marking the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two.

While President Putin has been silent about plans for any escalation in Ukraine, there is no giving up the battle with a renewed push by Russian troops on Monday to defeat the last Ukrainian troops standing at the devastated Mariupol steel mill.

"You are fighting for the motherland, for its future, so that no one forgets the lessons of the Second World War. So that there is no place in the world for executioners, pursuers and Nazis," President Putin said.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in his own speech on Monday, promised Ukraine would win.

"On Victory Day over Nazism, we are fighting for new victories. The road to it is difficult, but we have no doubt that we will win," Zelensky said.

In Odesa, the main Black Sea port for exporting agricultural products, one person was killed and five injured when seven missiles hit a shopping mall and depot, the Ukrainian Armed Forces said on Facebook.

Video footage from the scene showed firefighters and rescue workers combing through piles of debris dousing the still-smoking rubble.

Separately in the city of Bogodukhov, northwest of Kharkiv, four people were killed and several houses destroyed in the Russian attack, local media quoted Kharkiv officials as saying. Meanwhile in parts of eastern Ukraine, Luhansk, Kharkiv and Dnipro, air raid sirens sounded on Tuesday morning.

Ukraine's Defense Ministry said Russian troops backed by tanks and artillery were carrying out an "invasion operation" at the Azovstal Mariupol factory, where hundreds of Ukrainian troops had endured the months-long siege.

Mariupol lies between the Crimean Peninsula, captured by Moscow in 2014, and parts of eastern Ukraine under the control of Russian-backed separatists. Occupying this city will allow Moscow to connect the two regions.

More than 5.5 million Ukrainians have fled their country since Russia's February 24 invasion, according to the United Nations, which calls it Europe's fastest-growing refugee crisis since World War Two.