Smoke was seen in the strategic city on the Black Sea coast on Sunday morning, a Reuters witness said.
Washington Post correspondent Isabelle Khurshudyan, who is in Odesa, tweeted: “Loud explosions in downtown Odessa right now. My hotel room windows just shook. Not clear what that was.”
Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesman for Odesa’s regional military administration, urged city residents to stay in shelters.
“We will overcome. Hell to enemies!” he wrote in a Facebook post.
“What is the goal of the Russian troops? They want to capture Donbas and the south of Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address on Saturday.
He said that Ukrainian forces too were shifting their attention eastward: “We are aware that the enemy has reserves to increase pressure in the east.”
On Sunday morning, explosions were reported in the strategic southern port city of Odesa on the Black Sea coast. We’re still awaiting confirmation of what happened.