Throughout most of the more than four-year long Russia-Ukraine war, Russian forces have largely held off from any sustained and large-scale attack against the key southern port city of Odesa, but this restraint has clearly changed.
Odesa since Monday has been getting pounded, with Ukrainian officials describing that Ukrainian port infrastructure and a border crossing with Romania was targeted overnight. This vital economic, food, grain, and trade lifeline to the outside world is under threat - and is the result of leaders in Kiev deciding to recently escalate long-range drone attacks against Russian territory.
President Zelensky also said the strikes "deliberately damaged a border crossing point on the border with Romania, as well as export infrastructure."
One person was confirmed injured in the attack, which also resulted in a fire at a residential building as well as energy infrastructure coming under fresh attack.
Specifically, the strikes damaged a checkpoint for ferry services at Orlivka on the border with Romania. "Processing of citizens and vehicles through this checkpoint has been temporarily suspended," Ukraine's border service announced in a statement.
The tempo of strikes on Odesa has most definitely escalated this month, as Reuters details, "The Odesa region faced more than 300 air-raid alerts in August, lasting a combined 238 hours, according to a monitoring service."
Ukrainian-bound cargo ships also continue to be attacked off the coast in the Black Sea. Some new weapons systems are reportedly being demonstrated with deadly effect there.
"Behind the strikes is Russia’s new Banderol cruise missile, which has turned Ukraine’s Black Sea coast into a deadly no-go zone for cargo ships and hammered its ports since it entered serial production at the end of last month," writes The Telegraph.
"Cheap, fast and carrying a 114kg high-explosive fragmentation warhead, Banderols are launched from Russian-occupied Crimea, often by Mi-28 attack helicopters," the report describes. According to more of its specs:
Translated as “small parcel” in English, it can reach speeds of up to 400mph and can hit targets more than 300 miles away. They are stored at Dzhankoi district, Kirovske airfield, and Simferopol airfield in Crimea.
Another result of the overnight attack on Odesa was more widespread power outages in the region, amid a broader increasingly national infrastructure strain headed toward winter.
More broadly across Ukraine and especially the capital region, Russian drone and missile strikes have been sustained for at least five consecutive days, leading to significant casualties nationwide:
At least 16 people were killed and 54 others injured in Russian attacks across Ukraine over the past day, according to local authorities.
The heaviest toll was reported in Kyiv and the surrounding oblast, where Russia’s fifth consecutive day of attacks killed at least 12 people and injured 21 others.
Six of those killed were Ukrainian Railways employees, who died when a ballistic missile struck railway facilities, the company said.
So clearly Russia is continuing to hammer away at Ukraine's national energy, power, and logistics/transport infrastructure.
While this tactic is nothing new, there does seem to be a ramped-up ferocity, which the Kremlin sees as retaliation for the Ukrainians escalating in the same way - likely with the help of Western intelligence. Zelensky has recently boasted that he is in effect 'taking the war to Russia' and its population, hoping to pressure Putin to make deep compromise at future negotiations.