Russia has sharply intensified strikes on Odesa, in what appears to be the most sustained campaign against the port since the war began. A merchant vessel leaving Odesa was reportedly struck by a Russian missile, killing four Indian crew and critically injuring another; New Delhi formally protested, but Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russian forces would continue targeting vessels carrying weapons and military supplies to Kyiv. Russian forces are also hitting port infrastructure, warehouses, fuel depots, rail links and energy facilities around Odesa, with claims that hundreds of Ukrainian locomotives have been destroyed — pointing to an effort to isolate Ukraine's principal Black Sea port from the rest of the country. The campaign runs alongside a broader Ukrainian drone offensive that has caused significant damage to Russian oil refineries, and a deepening crisis in occupied Crimea, which has run out of fuel entirely amid the same refining shortage (see companion feature).

Russia's own advance in the east continues in parallel: forces have been closing in on key Donbas "fortress belt" cities even as Western commentary continues to describe a “turning point” in Ukraine's favour — a gap between battlefield reality and public messaging that analysts say the leadership reshuffle itself may be tacitly acknowledging.

A tit-for-tat logistics war

The missile-and-drone exchange has also moved deeper into both countries' civilian economies. Ukrainian drones struck Wildberries warehouse complexes in Elektrostal and Kotovsk overnight on July 18, killing eight and injuring dozens, with sellers' losses estimated above RUB 150bn, Meduza reported — one of the deadliest strikes on a civilian commercial site inside Russia since the war began (see companion report on the wider destruction pattern). Kyiv said the warehouses were being used “to supply sanctioned components for the production of drones and navigation equipment”; Novaya Gazeta Europe's editor called the sites “legitimate targets”, while Conflict Intelligence Team co-founder Ruslan Leviev called the strikes a war crime — as he does with comparable Russian strikes on Ukrainian logistics. Financial Times reporter Christopher Miller reported the Wildberries strikes were themselves retaliation for Russian attacks on Nova Poshta's Ukrainian logistics network, which has had more than 400 branches and terminals damaged or destroyed since the war began, including its largest Kyiv sorting centre on June 15 and a Kharkiv terminal on July 19.

Russia responded to the Wildberries strikes with one of its largest missile barrages of the war on Kyiv, part of what bne IntelliNews has tracked as an escalating missile war increasingly hitting civilian as well as military targets on both sides. Diplomatically, the picture is no brighter: Russia has hardened its stance on returning occupied Ukrainian territory (see companion story), and a July 23 meeting between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Manila produced no breakthrough (see companion news analysis).