Russian Drone Attack on Odesa Injures 6, Including Children

Russia launched a mass drone attack on Odesa on Tuesday night, damaging residential and critical infrastructure and injuring six people, including at least two children and an infant, Ukrainian officials said.

According to Odesa regional governor Oleh Kiper and city military administration head Serhiy Lysak, Russian Shahed-type attack drones struck residential, logistical, and energy facilities across the city and the wider Odesa region.

Russia also struck energy infrastructure in the Odesa region overnight, energy company DTEK wrote in Telegram on Tuesday, adding that two of its facilities sustained significant damage and would take time to restore. The company said Russian attacks in December alone damaged 10 substations in the region, bringing the total number of affected energy facilities since the start of the strikes to 25.

As a result of the strikes, parts of Odesa were left without electricity, water, and heating, while emergency crews worked to restore services at critical infrastructure sites, Lysak wrote on Telegram.

A seven-month-old infant and an eight-year-old girl have injuries of “moderate severity,” along with 14-year-old boy, while a 42-year-old man was hospitalized in a serious condition, he wrote. In an update at 7:42 a.m. Kyiv time, he said that authorities had identified two more people who were injured in the attack, bringing the total number of casualties to six.

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In the wider Odesa region, a separate strike ignited warehouses belonging to a logistics company in one of the settlements, emergency officials said.

In two districts of the city, falling debris and direct hits damaged the facades and windows of several apartment buildings. Fires broke out in multiple apartments in one high-rise building, affecting units from the second to the sixth floors, as per Liga. 

The building’s façade on the fifth and sixth floors was partially destroyed, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service wrote in its post on Facebook.

Firefighters rescued eight people from the burning building, including one child. Several cars parked nearby were also damaged by fire.

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The Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a Telegram post that Russia had launched 127 attack drones overnight, including Shahed, Gerbera, and other unmanned aerial vehicles. Nearly 80 of them were Shahed-type drones.

The drones were launched from multiple directions, including Kursk, Orel, Bryansk, Millerovo, and Primorsko-Akhtarsk in Russia, as well as Chauda in temporarily occupied Crimea, the Air Force wrote.

Outside Odesa, two people were injured in a drone strike on Bila Tserkva, south of Kyiv, where two apartment buildings were damaged, according to Kyiv regional governor Mykola Kalashnyk’s Telegram post. Both injured residents received medical assistance at the scene.

In the Dnipropetrovsk region, two men aged 84 and 52 were injured in the Vasylkivska community as a result of drone attacks. They were hospitalized with injuries of moderate severity, Babel reported citing regional governor Vladyslav Haivanenko.

Russia has repeatedly targeted Odesa’s energy, port, and civilian infrastructure. Attacks earlier this month hit port and industrial facilities across the region, causing casualties, fires, and environmental damage along the city’s coastline. Local residents reportedly began rescuing birds with oil stains on their feathers and sheltering them in their apartments.