Soon after a much-touted but ultimately underwhelming Victory Day commemoration in Moscow, Russia’s military unleashed more firepower on Odessa.The Ukrainian military said Russian forces Monday fired seven missiles at the vital Ukrainian port city, hitting a shopping center and a warehouse. One person was killed and five wounded, the military said.Images overnight showed a burning building and debris — including a tennis shoe — in a heap of destruction in the city on the Black Sea. Mayor Gennady Trukhanov later visited the warehouse and said it “had nothing in common with military infrastructure or military objects.”Ukraine alleged at least some of the munitions utilized dated to the Soviet era, meaning they were unreliable in targeting. The Center for Defense Strategies, a Ukrainian think tank tracking the war, said Moscow also used some precision weapons against Odessa: Kinzhal, or “Dagger,” hypersonic air-to-surface missiles.Ukrainian, British, and American officials say Russia is rapidly using up its stock of precision weapons, raising the risk of more imprecise rockets being used as the conflict grinds on.After President Putin’s forces failed to take Kyiv early in the war, his focus shifted to the eastern industrial heartland of the Donbas — but one general has suggested Moscow’s aims also include cutting Ukraine’s maritime access to both the Black and Azov seas.That would also give it a swath of territory that would link Russia to both the Crimean Peninsula, which it seized in 2014, and Transnistria, a pro-Moscow region of Moldova.Even if it falls short of severing Ukraine from the coast — and it appears to lack the forces to do so — continuing missile strikes on Odessa reflect the city’s strategic importance. The Russian military has repeatedly targeted its airport and claimed it destroyed several batches of Western weapons.Odessa is also a major gateway for grain shipments, and its blockade by Russia already threatens global food supplies. Beyond that, the city is a cultural jewel, dear to Ukrainians and Russians alike, and targeting it carries symbolic significance as well.With Russian forces struggling to gain ground in the Donbas, military analysts suggest that hitting Odessa might serve to stoke concern about southwestern Ukraine, thus forcing Kyiv to put more forces there. That would pull them away from the eastern front as Ukraine’s military stages counter offensives near the northeastern city of Kharkiv, aiming to push the Russians back across the border there.Ukraine’s foreign minister, meanwhile, appeared to voice increasing confidence — and expanded goals — amid Russia’s stalled offensive.“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,” Dmytro Kuleba said in an interview with the Financial Times. “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.”Ukraine’s ability to stymie a larger, better-armed Russian military has surprised many who had anticipated a much quicker conflict. With the war now in its 11th week and Kyiv bogging down Russian forces and even staging a counter offensive, Ukraine’s foreign minister appeared to suggest the country could expand its aims beyond merely pushing Russia back to areas it or its allies held on the day of the February 24 invasion.That appears to indicate that Ukraine wants to try to retake Crimea as well as regions of the Donbas taken by Russia and the separatists it backs.The comments seemed to reflect political ambitions more than battlefield realities: Many analysts acknowledge that while Russia isn’t capable of making quick gains, the Ukrainian military isn’t currently strong enough to drive the Russians back.
