A Russian missile that killed five people in the Black Sea port city of Odesa on Wednesday landed just 500 meters from a convoy carrying Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, a source said.
The source said the two leaders’ convoy felt the impact of the strike and the group saw a “mushroom cloud” of smoke.
Five people were killed in the strike and more were wounded, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Navy, Dmytro Pletenchuk, told CNN.
Neither of the two leaders were injured, but Zelensky said he was close enough to have seen and heard the strike.
“We saw this strike today. You can see who we are dealing with, they don’t care where they strike. I know that there were victims today, I don’t know all the details yet, but I know that there are dead and wounded,” Zelensky said from Odesa on Wednesday.
Mitsotakis said Zelensky had given him a tour of the city, which has sustained huge damage from months of Russian strikes, before they heard air raid sirens.
“Shortly after, as we were getting into our cars, we heard a big explosion,” Mitsotakis told reporters later Wednesday. “I think that for us is the best, most vivid reminder that there is a real war going on here. Every day there is a war, which not only affects the front, the soldiers, it affects our innocent fellow citizens.”
Zelensky frequently makes high-risk trips to the front lines and has welcomed dozens of world leaders to Ukraine over more than two years of war with Russia, but Wednesday’s attack may represent one of the closest calls for the president.
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