Topic analysis

Ukraine: 3 killed in Odesa, Kyiv targets Russian oil exports

Russian drone strikes on the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa left at least three people dead overnight, including a 2-year-old girl. Meanwhile, Ukraine has continued retaliatory strikes against Russian oil facilities. At least three people were killed and 15 more injured in Russian drone attacks on the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa on Monday morning, according to local authorities. Among those reported dead were a 30-year-old woman and her 2-year-old daughter, plus a 53-year-old woman, after a drone struck a multi-story residential building. "Law enforcement agencies are documenting the aggressor state's latest war crimes against the civilian population," said regional military governor Oleh Kiper. "Residential buildings, critical infrastructure and administrative buildings were hit," he said. "Rescue operations are ongoing; there may still be people under the rubble." According to Ukrainian air defense forces, the latest Russian air strike involved 141 drones, 114 of which were intercepted. Separate strikes in Ukraine 's northern Chernihiv region also left some 340,000 people without power, authorities said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday that the country's partners "need to strengthen air defense together so that the interception rate of drones and missiles continues to increase." With US-led peace efforts currently stalled, partly due to the war in the Middle East , Zelenskyy added: "Russia has no intention of stopping" its invasion of Ukraine , which is now into its fifth year. Meanwhile, Ukraine has continued to carry out strikes on Russian oil export facilities as it looks to prevent Moscow from capitalizing on increased demand for Russian oil given the decrease in supply from the Middle East as a result of the ongoing US-Israeli war against Iran . Over the Easter weekend, there have been reports of Ukrainian drone strikes on oil facilities in Primorsk in Russia 's northwestern Leningrad region, Kstovo near the city of Nizhny Novgorod, about 450 kilometers (280 miles) east of Moscow, and the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, where the Ukrainian armed forces claimed on Monday to have hit a Russian warship. On Sunday evening, at least one person was reported to have been killed in the Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine, while local authorities also reported Ukrainian attacks on Sevastopol in Russian-occupied Crimea and on a cargo ship carrying wheat in the Sea of Azov. Almost 150 more Ukrainian drones were intercepted in the space of three hours on Sunday night, according to the Russian military, but authorities said that almost half a million Russian households were left temporarily without power. According to the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Russian military bloggers ("milbloggers") have said that damage to oil export and energy infrastructure will be "costly and time-consuming to repair." The ISW added: " Russian milbloggers have previously complained about the Russian inability to repair damaged facilities due to parts sanctions and Russian air defense failures." Speaking in Damascus, Syria , on Sunday, where he visited interim Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa , President Zelenskyy warned that Russia was benefitting economically from the Iran war, in particular due to the partial easing of US sanctions on Russian oil. "Russia gets additional money because of this," he said, while also repeating calls for deliveries of air defense munitions to Ukraine to be maintained. "We have to recognize that we are not the priority for today," Zelenskyy added. "I am afraid a long war [in Iran] will give us less support." Meanwhile, on the frontline in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian commander-in-chief  Oleksandr Syrskyi claimed on Monday that his forces have liberated 480 square kilometers (almost 300 square miles) of territory since the end of January.  Nevertheless, he wrote on the Telegram messaging platform, Russian troops are continuing their attempts to establish a buffer zone in the Dnipropetrovsk region, while the ISW said that Ukrainian counterattacks were disrupting Russian efforts near Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Edited by: Natalie Muller