The Ukrainian prime minister was meeting with Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
A Russian missile exploded in the Ukrainian port city of Odesa early Wednesday, just hundreds of feet from where President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was meeting with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, according to sources and officials.
“It hit in a couple of hundred of meters (about 300 feet) from us, while the meeting was going,” a source said.
The source also added that this was “the closest call ever,” excluding Zelenskyy’s trips to visit troops on the front lines.
Zelenskyy had shown the Greek prime minister around the port, the two got back in the car, and then as they were in the car preparing to leave, they heard the air raid siren go off followed shortly by the missile striking and hitting the port.
However, according to the source, it is unlikely that Zelenskyy was the target, with the source saying Russians were likely just launching missiles at their usual targets.
“Yes, a missile strike was carried out in Odesa, probably by a ballistic weapon, hitting one of the buildings in the port infrastructure. But this is not in any way related to a specific visit. It is related to the terror that the enemy is carrying out quite methodically,” a Ukrainian spokesperson for the joint press center of the Ukrainian Southern Defense Forces said Wednesday after the attack.
Zelenskyy’s trip was not announced before Wednesday but his location was known by the time the strike hit his location.
Neither of the leaders was harmed.
Reuters
The Russian Ministry of Defense said they successfully struck a hangar in a port in Odesa where unmanned boats of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were being prepared in a statement Wednesday.
A source with the Biden administration told ABC News it doesn’t seem like Zelenskyy was the target of the Russian missile strike in Odesa but said it was certainly a very dangerous and reckless attack.
The strike was “yet another reminder of how Russia is continuing to attack Ukraine recklessly every single day and of Ukraine’s urgent needs, in particular, for air defense interceptors,” a U.S. National Security Council spokesperson said.
At least five people were killed in the Russian strike on Odesa, a Ukrainian navy spokesman said.