(Reuters) – It could not be ruled out that a Russian missile strike on Odessa port a day earlier had targeted the delegations of Volodymyr Zelenskiy or Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, a top Ukrainian presidential adviser said.
The leaders were inspecting the Ukrainian grain export corridor in the Black Sea port when the missile hit port infrastructure.
“It really was less than 500 meters from us. What was that? … You cannot exclude it was directed at the delegation of my president or the delegation of foreign guest,” Ihor Zhovkva, a top diplomatic adviser, told CNN Live in an interview.
Both Zelenskiy and Mitsotakis appeared at a press conference on Wednesday to say they had witnessed the strike. Five people were killed in the attack, the Ukrainian military said.
The Russian defence ministry said in a statement on Wednesday that its troops had attacked a hangar housing Ukrainian naval drones in the port, adding that “the goal has been achieved”.
Ukraine’s Black Sea port infrastructure has been a constant target for Russian attacks, which have been stepped up since mid-July when Moscow quit a U.N.-brokered deal that allowed safe passage of Ukrainian grain and Kyiv established its own export corridor.
Zhovkva said the missile was launched from Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014.
“It took the missile less than three minutes to reach the target, the site of the port of Odesa,” Zhovkva said.
“Have we had enough air defence, this ballistic missile could have been intercepted,” he said.
(Reporting by Yuliia Dysa; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
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