Ukraine’s navy said a new temporary Black Sea “humanitarian corridor” had started working on Thursday and that the first ships were expected to use it within days.
Oleh Chalyk, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian navy, told Reuters that the corridor would be for commercial ships blocked at Ukraine’s Black Sea ports and for grain and agricultural products.
The navy said in a separate statement that the risk posed by mines in the Black Sea and the military threat from Russia remained.
3 killed
Two young women and a man were killed and nine other people were wounded in a Russian missile attack on the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia late on Wednesday, Ukrainian officials said on Thursday.
“Three people dead and nine people injured including an 11-month baby — this is the result of the strike on the regional centre,” a statement from President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office said. “The Russian shell took away the lives of a 43-year-old man and young women who were 19 and 21.”
Officials said two of the people had been killed on the spot and a woman had died overnight at a hospital.
A video posted by Zelensky showed smoke rising from burning and badly damaged buildings next to a church.
Zaporizhzhia city council secretary Anatoliy Kurtev said the church had been destroyed and about 15 high-rise buildings had been damaged. The authorities received requests from residents of at least 400 apartments to repair smashed windows and damaged balconies.
Pictures posted by city officials on the Telegram messaging app showed several buses and a row of foldable tables and chairs set up outside near damaged buildings where residents and city workers were filling in papers to record the damages.
Zelenskiy’s office said the Russian military over the past 24 hours had conducted 82 strikes on 21 villages and towns across the Zaporizhzhia region, using artillery, missiles and drones.
Russian drones
Russian drones destroyed a fuel depot in Ukraine’s western Rivne region in an attack in the early hours of Thursday, causing a huge blaze, governor Vitaliy Koval said. There were no casualties, he said.
