Ukraine-Russia; Odesa prepares for attack as Putin ‘shifts focus to Black Sea’

Ukraine’s top security official has said that Russia’s war command has shifted its attention to the southern front in order to cut the country off from the Black Sea.

He said that Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol, Mykolaiv, Chernihiv and Odessa remain strategically important, and that Russian troops plan to encircle the cities and block Ukrainian armed forces from entering.

“The main attention of the command of the Russian occupation forces is moved to the South, trying to deprive Ukraine from the exit to the Black and Azov Seas, which they think will create conditions for economic suppression of the Ukrainian Resistance,” Oleksiy Danilov wrote in a Facebook post on Sunday.

He concluded: “Never fight with the Ukrainians, sooner or later we will come to you to repay all the debts you have accumulated, and the bill has run for centuries.”

It comes as president Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russian forces are preparing to bombard the city of Odesa on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast.

“Rockets against Odessa? This will be a war crime,” he said in a televised address

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