Five injured when Russian missiles hit Odesa and damaged an art museum

A day after Ukraine damaged a Russian naval ship in an airstrike in Crimea, Russia hit the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa with missiles and drones, wounding five people and damaging a 19th century art museum, local and military authorities said Monday.

In another setback, Ukraine’s 128th Mountain Assault Brigade added the death toll for a Russian attack on a Ukrainian medal ceremony on Friday, saying in a post on Telegram that it had lost 19 soldiers in the attack. The ceremony was held in a village near the front lines in the southern Zaporizhia region.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said this on Sunday criminal proceedings were carrying out the attack, apparently against Ukrainian military officials who had given permission for the ceremony to take place in the open, just a few kilometers from the front, where the soldiers were vulnerable. Normally, the Ukrainian army holds these types of ceremonies in basements or far from the battlefields.

The attack that damaged the Museum of Fine Arts in Odesa follows a strike in July at the Museum of Fine Arts in Odesa Orthodox Transfiguration Cathedral and is a particular blow to a city famous for its history, culture and ethnic pluralism. Founded in 1899, the museum is located in a part of the city that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Photos posted on social media by the head of the regional military administration, Oleh Kiper, showed broken doors and windows and pockmarked walls, and he said seven exhibits were damaged. A rocket left a deep crater in the street outside the museum.

“A few centimeters here, a few there, and we could have lost many of our pieces and exhibits,” Odesa Mayor Hennadii Trukhanov told Ukrainian television channel Suspline. “Fortunately this did not happen.”

Staff at the museum, a columned palace, had removed more than one 12,000 works of art taken into custody early last year. Coincidentally, the museum celebrated its 124th anniversary on Monday, according to a Facebook post written by deputy director Oleksandra Kovalchuk.

Russian forces have looted museums in the areas they have occupied and attacked churches and theaters in an apparent campaign erasing Ukrainian culture. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has made the false argument that Ukraine does not have a culture independent of Russia as an attempt to justify Moscow’s massive invasion more than 20 months ago.

In total, Russia fired at least four missiles and 22 exploding drones at Odessa, according to the Ukrainian armed forces, which said in a statement that it shot down two of the missiles and 15 of the drones.

“Unfortunately, kamikaze drones caused damage to port infrastructure, including warehouses, unloading equipment and vehicles transporting grain,” Ukraine’s Southern Command said in a statement on Telegram, a messaging app, adding that the fire had been extinguished.

Mr Kiper said shrapnel from explosions had injured five people.

Russia has bombed Odesa regularly since July, when it canceled an agreement allowing Ukraine to ship its grain from Odesa and other ports across the Black Sea. Ukraine foiled Moscow’s plan to take the city early last year, but while the threat of invasion has subsided, the country remains a crucible of war, not least because of its location on the Black Sea.

Ukraine has made progress in recent months in its campaign to undermine Russian naval dominance. In the latest example, Ukrainian Air Force commander Mykola Oleshchuk said his pilots carried out an airstrike late Friday on the city of Kerch in Crimea, a region occupied and illegally annexed by Russia since 2014.

The attack damaged a small Russian rocket ship, the Askold, which was undergoing repairs at the shipyard, according to Planet Labs, a private satellite company. The Russian Defense Ministry also said one of its ships had suffered damage.

“It is still floating, but the top of the ship is noticeably damaged,” a Ukrainian navy captain, Andrii Ryzhenko, said in a post on Facebook after analyzing the satellite images. The Russian Defense Ministry said a Ukrainian attack with 15 cruise missiles had damaged a ship in the port of Kerch, according to RIA Novosti, a Russian state news agency.

Ukraine has used naval and air drones and missiles from the country’s allies in NATO to attack NATO headquarters. The Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, warships, naval and other military infrastructure and the Bridge over the Kerch Straitconnecting Crimea with Russia.

This effort has allowed Ukraine to open a maritime corridor for the export of grain and other products along the Black Sea coast to Romanian waters. In April last year, during the most high-profile attack on the Russian Navy, Ukraine the flagship was sunk of the Black Sea Fleet.

Overall, this year has seen little change in front-line positions, despite heavy fighting, significant losses on both sides and a counter-offensive launched by Ukrainian forces in June to retake land in the south and east of the country, but not led to a decisive breakthrough.