Russian forces launched an aerial attack on the Black Sea port of Odessa in the early hours of Monday, Ukraine’s air force and local officials said. Granaries were destroyed and the city’s port was “significantly damaged” in the drone and missile attack, according to Ukraine’s southern command.
At least one person was injured as the blasts shattered glass in nearby houses. The barrage came after Ukraine struck the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Crimea on Friday.
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
The Odessa attack was launched from the sea, Ukrainian military officials said, using a surface missile carrier and a submarine. Most of the missiles and drones were shot down by Ukrainian air defenses, but the port took a hit, and a fire broke out in a hotel that hasn’t been used in years, officials wrote on Telegram.
Canada’s House of Commons speaker has apologized after praising a 98-year-old Ukrainian man who had served in a notorious Nazi military unit during World War II. Speaker Anthony Rota introduced Yaroslav Hunka following President Volodymyr Zelensky’s address to Parliament on Friday, calling him a “Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero.” Jewish groups condemned the honor.
A prominent Russian opposition figure has been transferred to a maximum-security prison in Siberia, his attorney said Sunday. Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Washington Post opinions contributor, was convicted of treason and sentenced to 25 years in prison in April after publicly denouncing Russia’s invasion in Ukraine.
The internet is being censored in Ukraine’s occupied Donetsk region after a decree from its Russian-backed leader, according to an exiled Ukrainian official. Petro Andrushchenko, an adviser to Mariupol’s Ukrainian mayor, said Sunday that the Kremlin’s spy agency has control of web traffic in the eastern region, that a Monday-through-Friday curfew has been reinstated and that demonstrations must be approved by Russian-backed authorities.
A bipartisan group of senators who visited Ukraine recently said there is no evidence weapons provided by Washington are making their way onto the black market. “We’re monitoring. We’re following every piece of equipment. There has been no diversion. No evidence of misappropriation,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday. It comes as the Biden administration is seeking approval from Congress for an additional $24 billion in aid to Ukraine.
Canada will provide Ukraine with defense support worth $482 million over the next three years, which will fund armored medevac vehicles that “are very much needed at the front,” Zelensky said in his Sunday night address. Zelensky met with Canadian leaders after his visit to Washington on Thursday.
Finland’s top diplomat said aiding Ukraine is “not charity.” In an interview with The Post’s Ishaan Tharoor, Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen said “it feels good” to be a fully fledged member of NATO now. She also spoke about the dawning realization that “this is not just Putin’s war” — but one the “machinery” of Russia has been gearing up to for “a very long time.”
Polarizing Joint Chiefs chairman exits center stage: As Gen. Mark A. Milley enters retirement this month, his four-year term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is poised to go down as one of the most consequential and polarizing in recent memory, Dan Lamothe, Missy Ryan and Karen DeYoung report.
That includes his call, as the war in Ukraine approached its first anniversary, for the combatants to consider a “window of opportunity” to agree a peace deal — a position that was at odds with the Biden administration’s ongoing support for Ukraine.
