Russia strikes Ukraine’s Odesa port, kills railway worker in Zaporizhia

Russia launched a new wave of overnight strikes on Ukraine, targeting critical infrastructure in the southern port city of Odesa and the southeastern Zaporizhia region, as fighting between the two countries continued despite stalled diplomatic efforts to end the war.

Ukrainian officials said the attacks caused significant damage to transport and logistics facilities, killed a railway worker, injured civilians, and once again highlighted the vulnerability of strategic economic sites that remain essential to Ukraine’s wartime operations.

Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba said Russian drones struck the port of Odesa, Ukraine’s most important Black Sea gateway for exports and maritime trade. The assault damaged key sections of the port, including berths, warehouses, railway lines, and facilities used by port operators.

The latest strike underscores Russia’s continued focus on Ukraine’s maritime infrastructure, which has become central to Kyiv’s economy and wartime resilience. Since the collapse of earlier grain-export agreements, Odesa’s port facilities have remained frequent targets of missile and drone attacks aimed at disrupting exports and reducing Ukraine’s access to global markets.

According to Kuleba, the overnight attack also hit a railway sorting yard at the Zaporizhia-Live station in the Zaporizhia Oblast. The strike killed an assistant train driver and injured the main driver, who was taken to hospital for treatment.

Kuleba condemned the attack, saying it demonstrated that Russia was deliberately targeting civilians and workers maintaining vital services during wartime.
He said the victims were simply doing their jobs and helping keep the country functioning when they came under attack.

Rail networks have remained one of Ukraine’s most important logistical lifelines since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022. With commercial aviation halted and many roads damaged, rail transport has carried troops, civilians, humanitarian aid, and exports across the country. Attacks on railway systems are therefore viewed as attempts to weaken Ukraine’s mobility and economic endurance.

In a separate warning, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko said Russian drones and missiles also flew close to the site of the disused Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, increasing the risk of a major accident.

Ukraine is preparing to mark the 40th anniversary of the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear disaster this Sunday, a tragedy that remains one of the worst nuclear accidents in world history.

Kravchenko said Ukrainian monitoring systems detected 35 Russian Kinzhal ballistic missiles at various distances within roughly 20 kilometres of either the Chornobyl facility or the Khmelnytskyi Nuclear Power Plant.

He added that 18 of the missiles passed within approximately 20 kilometres of both facilities during the same flight path.

According to Ukrainian authorities, there was no military justification for the routes chosen by the missiles. Officials argued that the flights appeared designed to intimidate the population and increase psychological pressure by bringing weapons dangerously close to nuclear infrastructure.

Kravchenko said Russia may be using the Chornobyl zone as a corridor for drone operations in an attempt to avoid heavily defended areas where Ukrainian air defence systems are concentrated.

Ukraine’s military has repeatedly stated that it must prioritise limited air defence resources around major cities, power plants, and critical industrial centres. As a result, less populated regions and unconventional flight routes can sometimes provide openings for incoming drones or missiles.

The Ukrainian armed forces said they intercepted 189 out of 215 drones launched by Russia overnight. However, officials said 24 drones struck 13 locations, while debris from downed drones fell at six other sites. Several drones were still being tracked in Ukrainian airspace as of Wednesday morning.

The continued use of large-scale drone swarms has become a defining feature of the war.

Russia has increasingly relied on drones to overwhelm Ukrainian air defences, exhaust interceptor stocks, and strike infrastructure far from front-line combat zones.

Meanwhile, Russia said it also came under renewed Ukrainian drone attack overnight.
The Russian Ministry of Defence claimed it destroyed 155 Ukrainian drones. Local officials reported casualties in the city of Syzran, located in central Russia.

Samara Region Governor Vyacheslav Fedorischev said an adult woman and a child were killed when an enemy drone struck a residential building in Syzran.

Images released by Russian emergency services showed part of a four-storey apartment building collapsed, with rescue workers searching through debris.

Syzran is home to one of Russia’s leading air force training institutions, making it a potentially symbolic or strategic target.

Ukraine rarely comments directly on attacks inside Russian territory, but Kyiv has increasingly expanded long-range drone operations against military sites, fuel depots, logistics centres, and defence facilities deep inside Russia.

Those operations are widely viewed as part of a broader strategy to impose costs on Russia far from the battlefield and disrupt its military supply chain.

The latest exchange of attacks comes at a time when diplomatic momentum has slowed significantly.

In recent months, the United States has attempted to broker negotiations aimed at reducing hostilities and opening a path toward a ceasefire. However, no breakthrough has emerged.

Analysts say international attention shifted sharply after the outbreak of conflict in the Middle East, reducing focus on Ukraine diplomacy. But even before that development, major disagreements between Kyiv and Moscow had already hindered progress.

One of the central disputes remains territory.

Ukraine has proposed freezing the conflict roughly along existing front lines as a basis for talks, while preserving its legal claim to occupied areas.

Russia has rejected that framework and continues to demand full control of regions it claims to have annexed, including the Donetsk Oblast, large parts of which remain under Ukrainian control.

Kyiv has repeatedly said such demands are unacceptable and amount to rewarding aggression.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Kyiv has asked Turkiye to host a direct meeting between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Sybiha said Ukraine had also approached several other capitals about hosting such a summit.

He added that Ukraine would consider any neutral venue except Belarus or Russia.

President Zelenskyy has long called for a direct meeting with Putin, arguing that only top-level political decisions can end a conflict now in its fifth year.

Moscow has so far shown little interest in such a summit without prior agreement on core issues.

The war, which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, has transformed into a prolonged struggle involving trench warfare, long-range missile attacks, drone campaigns, and attritional fighting across hundreds of kilometres of front lines.

For civilians on both sides, the latest overnight attacks are another reminder that while diplomacy remains uncertain, the war itself shows no sign of slowing.

In Ukraine, ports, railways, and power systems remain under threat. In Russia, cities far from the border are increasingly exposed to retaliatory drone strikes. And with no settlement in sight, both nations appear locked in a conflict where military pressure continues to overshadow political solutions.