Odesa douses fires after Russian missile strikes

REUTERS: Firefighters battled blazes in Odesa until early hours on Tuesday after Russian missiles pounded the Ukrainian port on the day President Vladimir Putin led celebrations in Moscow marking Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two.

In a defiant Victory Day speech on Monday, Putin exhorted Russians to battle for their homeland, but was silent about plans for any escalation. In Ukraine, there was no let up in fighting, with Russian strikes on targets in the east and south and a renewed push by Kremlin's forces to defeat the last Ukrainian troops holding out in a steelworks in ruined Mariupol.

Air raid sirens could be heard across several regions of Ukraine early on Tuesday including Luhansk, Kharkiv and Dnipro.

Serhiy Gaidai, the governor of Luhansk, said the region was attacked 22 times in the past 24 hours.

"During the day on May 9th, the Russians fired en masse on all possible routes out of the region."

"You are fighting for the Motherland, for its future, so that no one forgets the lessons of World War Two. So that there is no place in the world for executioners, castigators and Nazis," Putin said.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in his own speech on Monday, promised Ukrainians would triumph.

In Odesa, the major Black Sea port for exporting agricultural products, one person was killed and five people were injured when seven missiles hit a shopping centre and a depot, Ukraine's armed forces said on Facebook.

Video footage from the scene showed fire and rescue workers combing through piles of rubble dousing still smoking wreckage. Ukrainian emergency services said all the fires set off by the strikes were extinguished early on Tuesday.

Ukraine and its allies have been trying to find a way to unblock ports or provide alternate routes for exporting its significant crops of grain, wheat and corn.

European Council President Charles Michel visited Odesa on Monday, and his meeting with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal was interrupted by the missile attack.

Their talks continued in a bomb shelter, according to Shmyhal's official Twitter account.

In the town of Bogodukhov, northwest of Kharkiv, four people were killed and several homes were destroyed in Russian attacks on Monday, local media quoted Kharkiv officials as saying.

Ukraine's defence ministry said Russian forces backed by tanks and artillery were conducting "storming operations" at Mariupol's Azovstal plant, where hundreds of Ukrainian defenders have held out through months of siege.

Capturing Mariupol, located the Crimean Peninsula, seized by Russia in 2014, and parts of eastern Ukraine under the control of Moscow-backed separatists, would allow Russia to link the two areas.