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Heavy Russian strikes hit the southern Ukrainian port city of Mykolaiv early on Sunday, killing the owner of one of the country’s largest grain exporters, while Russia said a Ukrainian drone struck its Black Sea fleet headquarters in Sevastopol.
Oleksiy Vadatursky, founder and owner of agriculture company Nibulon, and his wife were killed in their home, Mykolaiv Governor Vitaliy Kim said on Telegram.
Headquartered in Mykolaiv, a strategically important city that borders the mostly Russia-occupied Kherson region, Nibulon specializes in the production and export of wheat, barley and corn, and has its own fleet and shipyard.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy described Vadatursky’s death as “a great loss for all of Ukraine”, saying the businessman had been building a modern grain market involving a network of transhipment terminals and elevators.
“It is these people, these companies, precisely the south of Ukraine, which has guaranteed the world’s food security,” Zelenskiy said later in his nightly address. “This was always so. And it will be so once again.”
He added that Ukraine’s social and industrial potential, “our people, our capabilities, are surely more powerful than any Russian missiles or shells.”
Three people were also wounded in the attacks on Mikolaiv, the city’s Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych told Ukrainian television, adding 12 missiles hit homes and educational facilities. He earlier described the strikes as “probably the most powerful” on the city of the entire five-month-old war.
Up to 50 Grad rockets hit residential areas in the southern city of Nikopol on Sunday morning, Dnipropetrovsk Governor Valentyn Reznichenko wrote on Telegram. One person was wounded.
Ukrainian forces hit Russia’s Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Russian-held Sevastopol early on Sunday, the Crimean port city’s governor Mikhail Razvozhayev told Russian media.
