Russia attacks Odesa as Ukraine retakes villages near Kharkiv

Officials in Ukraine announced Russia fired seven hypersonic missiles in an attack on Odesa, Ukraine’s largest port. The missiles hit a shopping center and a warehouse. One person was killed and five others were left with “medium-intensity injuries.”

“This facility had nothing in common with military infrastructure or military objects. There are no ammunition depots here and there have never been,” Odesa Mayor Gennady Trukhanov said Tuesday. “This is how the Russian world congratulated the hero city of Odesa.”

Monday’s attack on Ukraine’s largest port came on the same day the chief of the United Nations commented on “the impact of the war in Ukraine,” describing Russia’s actions as “profound and far-reaching.”

“The consequences of escalation are too frightening to contemplate,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in Moldova Monday. “I am deeply concerned about the continuation and possible spread of the war Russia is waging in Ukraine, and by the impact it is having not only in the region but around the world.”

Just hours after the Odesa attack, Defense Ministry adviser Yuriy Saks announced Tuesday that Ukraine had recaptured villages from Russian troops near Kharkiv. These villages include Cherkaski Tyshky, Ruski Tyshki, Borshchova and Slobozhanske.

“The military operations of the Ukrainian armed forces around Kharkiv, especially north and northeast of Kharkiv, are sort of a success story,” Saks said. “The Ukrainian army was able to push these war criminals to a line beyond the reach of their artillery.”

The success of Ukraine near Kharkiv may inform Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba’s apparent increased confidence and expanded goals. In an interview with the Financial Times, Kuleba hinted that Ukraine wants to try to retake Crimea as well as regions of the Donbas taken by Russia and the separatists it backs.

“In the first months of the war, the victory for us looked like withdrawal of Russian forces to the positions they occupied before Feb. 24 and payment for inflicted damage,” Kuleba said. “Now if we are strong enough on the military front and we win the battle for Donbas, which will be crucial for the following dynamics of the war, of course the victory for us in this war will be the liberation of the rest of our territories.”

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.