A convoy carrying the leaders on a visit to the city felt the impact of the strike and the group saw a “mushroom cloud” of smoke, according to the source.

Five people were killed in the strike and more were wounded, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Navy, Dmytro Pletenchuk, told CNN, though neither Zelensky or Mitsotakis were injured.

Zelensky frequently makes high-risk trips to the front lines and has welcomed dozens of world leaders to Ukraine over more than two years of war with Russia, but Wednesday’s attack may represent one of the closest calls for the president. The strike’s proximity to Mitsotakis – the leader of a NATO member state – also underlines the dangers of such visits and potential global repercussions of the conflict.

Zelensky stated he was close enough to see and hear the strike.

“We saw this strike today. You can see who we are dealing with, they don’t care where they strike. I know that there were victims today, I don’t know all the details yet, but I know that there are dead and wounded,” Zelensky said from Odesa on Wednesday.

“We need to defend ourselves first and foremost. The best way to do that is with an air defense system,” he added.

Mitsotakis said Zelensky had given him a tour of the southern city, which has sustained huge damage from months of Russian strikes, before they heard air raid sirens.

“Shortly after, as we were getting into our cars, we heard a big explosion,” Mitsotakis told reporters later Wednesday, adding, “I think that for us is the best, most vivid reminder that there is a real war going on here. Every day there is a war, which not only affects the front, the soldiers, it affects our innocent fellow citizens.”

Odesa lies at the mouth of the Danube River and is crucial for Ukraine’s grain exports, which Russia has repeatedly tried to stem since launching its invasion. It is also the main base of Ukraine’s navy.

Russia’s Defense Ministry announced, “The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation launched a high-precision missile attack on a hangar in the industrial port district of Odesa, where preparations were underway for the combat use of unmanned boats of the armed forces of Ukraine. The target of the strike has been achieved. The object is hit”, without mentioning Zelensky or Mitsotakis.

Russia has stepped up its strikes on the region in recent days, and on Saturday a Russian drone attack on an apartment block in the city killed 12 people, including five children, Ukrainian officials have confirmed.

Zelensky stated the attack pressed home the need to further strengthen the country’s air defenses.

He has often argued that Western leaders need to visit Ukraine to understand the reality of Russia’s ongoing aggression.

Speaking after Wednesday’s strike, Zelensky noted he had welcomed Mitsotakis to “honor the memory” of those killed in Sunday’s attack and urged his allies to provide more support.

“The world has enough air defense systems and the ability to produce weapons for defense,” he said in his daily address.

“Weapons are needed here to save lives. Solutions are needed now – not some day, but for the people who endure terrorist attacks every day and night,” he added.

In Washington, where US President Joe Biden’s $60 billion request for aid for Ukraine has stalled, the White House announced the strike was another sign the war-torn country needed more military assistance, and used it to pressure House Speaker Mike Johnson to bring up a vote on the package.

“This strike is 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 National Security Council spokesperson stated, adding, “We again call on the House of Representatives to take action to support Ukraine so that we can provide the Ukrainian armed forces with the equipment they desperately need to defend against these outrageous Russian attacks.”

European Council President Charles Michel condemned the strike as “another sign of Russia’s cowardly tactics”, which he said were “below even the Kremlin’s playbook”.

In May 2022, Michel was visiting Odesa when Russia fired 10 cruise missiles at the region.

Speaking to ICTV on Wednesday, Lieutenant General Aleksandr Pavlyuk said that the most pressing goal is to stop the Russian advances and to regroup Ukrainian units so that the battered forces could be pulled back from the front line and replenished. It would then allow to “create a strike group and carry out counter-strike actions”.

“I think we will stabilize the situation shortly,” Pavlyuk stated, adding that the command is trying to “do everything possible to prepare the troops for more active actions, and to seize the initiative”.

The Ukrainian army has been losing ground in the Donbass where Russian forces seized the heavily fortified city of Avdeevka last month. The loss occurred amid Kiev’s worsening ammunition shortage and the delays in the deliveries of Western military aid.

Ukraine’s last major counteroffensive ended in a failure, resulting in heavy casualties and the destruction of many of the Western-supplies tanks and other hardware.

The much-anticipated operation began in June 2023 and effectively ground to a halt in the fall of that year, as Ukrainian armored units struggled to cross thick minefields and were ultimately not strong enough to break through Russian fortified positions. More than 166,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed or wounded during last year’s counteroffensive, according to the estimates by the Russian Defense Ministry.

Ukrainian war effort has been further hampered by the months of in-fighting in US Congress, with Republican legislators blocking the $61 billion worth of additional military aid.

A survey carried out by the Ukrainian pollster SOCIS shows Zelensky trailing in the first round and then losing the runoff to the recently sacked General Valery Zaluzhny.

The SOCIS survey shows Zaluzhny receiving 41% of the vote in the first round, and 67.5% in a runoff, while the incumbent would receive only 23.7% initially and no more than 32.5% in the second round.

Former President Pyotr Poroshenko would receive just 6.4% of the vote in the first round, while the ex-speaker of Ukraine’s parliament, Dmitry Razumov, would receive just 5.6%, the pollster said.

If the parliamentary elections were held today, a hypothetical “Zaluzhny bloc” would gain 46.4% of the seats, and Zelensky’s party just 21.1%, while Poroshenko would max out at 7.5%.

Polls in late 2023 showed Zaluzhny giving Zelensky a challenge. However, the incumbent president was predicted to receive over 47% of the vote in the first round and defeat the general in a runoff.

However, over 65% of the respondents to the latest survey agreed that elections should not be held while the conflict is ongoing. The poll was carried out from February 22 to March 1, on a representative sample of 3,000 adult Ukrainians, with a margin of error of 2.1%.

Before entering politics, Zelensky was a comedian who played Ukraine’s president on a TV show. In 2019, he campaigned on a peace platform and challenged Poroshenko, winning the runoff in a landslide with 73% of the vote. His newly formed party, named after the TV show (Servant of the People) swept the June 2019 parliamentary elections as well.

Last December, Zelensky announced that there would be no elections for either president or parliament as long as martial law remains in force, essentially extending his mandate and that of the parliament indefinitely.

Zaluzhny was the supreme commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine until February 8, when he was replaced by Russian-born General Aleksandr Syrsky. According to multiple reports in the media, the former had been clashing with Zelensky and showing political ambitions, but Zaluzhny has never made any overt moves to become involved in Ukrainian politics.