Russia Fires Deadly Hypersonic Missiles At Ukraine

 

A barrage of attacks slammed Ukraine's strategically placed port city of Odesa after Russian President Vladimir Putin marked his country's biggest patriotic holiday on Monday without being able to boast of any major battlefield successes. 

The Ukrainian military said Russian forces fired seven missiles from the air at Odesa, hitting a shopping centre and a warehouse. One person was killed and five were wounded, according to the military.

The Center for Defence Strategies, a Ukrainian think-tank tracking the war, said that during the attack a Russian supersonic bomber fired three hypersonic missiles. It identified the weapons used as Kinzhal, or "Dagger," hypersonic air-to-surface missiles.

The Kinzhal can fly at five times the speed of sound. Using advanced guided missiles allows Russia to fire from aircraft at a distance without being in Ukrainian air space and exposed to potential anti-aircraft fire.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian, British and American officials warn Russia is rapidly using up its stock of precision weapons and may not be able to quickly build more. That raises the risk of more imprecise rockets being used as the conflict grinds on, potentially resulting in more civilian deaths and other collateral damage.

44 found buried in the rubbles

Ukrainian officials announced Tuesday that the bodies of 44 civilians had been found in the rubble of a five-storey building in the northeast, which was was destroyed in an attack weeks ago.

"This is another horrible war crime of the Russian occupiers against the civilian population!" Oleh Synehubov, the head of Kharkiv's regional administration, said in a social media post announcing the deaths.

The building collapsed in March in Izyum in the Kharkiv region. The area has been under sustained Russian attack since the beginning of the war in late February.

AP