The News
A Russian missile strike in Odesa on Wednesday landed just hundreds of feet away from Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s motorcade, news reports said, as the Ukrainian president prepared to meet with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
The missile landed roughly 500 feet away from the motorcade, Greek officials told Protothema, a Greek news outlet. Neither Zelenskyy nor the Greek delegation were harmed, the publication reported.
“You see who we’re dealing with, they don’t care where to hit. I know there were casualties today; I don’t know all the details yet, but I know there are casualties,” Zelenskyy told reporters after the strike.
“Whether they are military, civilians, international guests — it doesn’t matter to these people,” Zelenskyy added, emphasizing that the best way to protect Ukraine against Russian strikes was further air defenses.
While Zelenskyy has regularly visited frontline locations since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago, this may have been his nearest miss yet, The Washington Post reported.
“We heard the sound of sirens and explosions that were very close to us, Mitsotakis said. ”We didn’t have time to go to a safe place.”