Ukraine received its first shipment of U.S.-made Abrams tanks that it says will strengthen its counteroffensive against Russian troops in the east amid continued Russian attacks in the southern city of Odesa and claims by occupation authorities in the Crimean port of Sevastopol that they had repelled a fresh missile attack on the port.
“Good news from [Defense] Minister [Rustem] Umerov. Abrams are already in Ukraine and are getting ready to strengthen our brigades. I am grateful to the allies for implementing agreements on this,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram a week after U.S. President Joe Biden confirmed the deliveries were imminent.
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The United States agreed in January to send Abrams tanks to Ukraine as the country was preparing its counteroffensive against Russian forces that launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022. In total, Washington said 31 of the battle tanks would be sent to Ukraine.
Earlier in September, the United States said it would provide Ukraine with the controversial depleted uranium ammunitions the M1 Abrams tanks use.
Ukraine has said it needs tanks to strengthen its brigades amid its counteroffensive that started in July.
Russian forces repelled an attack on the Crimean port of Sevastopol on Monday, downing one missile, the Russian-installed governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said on Telegram.
Razvozhayev, citing preliminary data, said Russian air-defense units downed a missile near the Belbek military airfield.
An air-raid alert was subsequently lifted. Traffic on the main bridge linking the Russian mainland with the Crimean Peninsula, annexed from Ukraine in 2014, was restored.
At least one Ukrainian missile struck the headquarters of Russia's Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol on September 22.
Ukrainian forces have delivered crippling blows to Russian forces near Sevastopol in recent weeks.
Ukraine's military on September 25 said the commander of Russia's Black Sea Fleet was killed along with other 33 naval officers in Ukraine's September 22 attack on the fleet headquarters in Sevastopol, although Russia gave vastly lower casualty figures.
The claims could not independently be verified.
On September 13, some 62 Russian naval personnel were killed in an attack on a Sevastopol shipyard that also damaged a submarine and a landing craft carrier, Kyiv said.
Separate reports late on September 25 stated that Russian air defenses had shot down seven Ukrainian drones in a “massive attack” on Russia’s Belgorod region. No injuries were reported.
Ukraine’s General Staff said on September 25 it was conducting offensive actions in the direction of the embattled city of Bakhmut and the regions of Donetsk, Melitopol, Zaporizhzhya. Ukraine's military also said it had repulsed Russian attacks in the Donetsk region.
WATCH: Russia launched a major aerial attack on southern Ukraine on September 25, destroying grain storage facilities in the Black Sea port city of Odesa.
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Russian Attack On Odesa Destroys Grain Storage Facilities
Earlier on September 25 the Ukrainian military said Russia had launched a major aerial attack on southern Ukraine overnight, hitting the port area of the southern city of Odesa, destroying grain storage facilities.
The Defense Forces of the South of Ukraine said Russia directed 19 Shahed drones and two Onyx supersonic missiles at Odesa and fired 12 Kalibr cruise missiles. The Ukrainian Air Force said the Kalibrs were launched from a ship and a submarine in the Black Sea. Only one of the Kalibr missiles was not shot down.
However, Russia “hit the port infrastructure” in Odesa, which “suffered significant damage,” the southern defense forces said, while the regional governor, Oleh Kiper, said close to 1,000 tons of grain was stored in the facilities that were hit.
He said a woman in Odesa was injured in the attack, adding that she was being treated at a local hospital.
Russia has ramped up attacks on Ukraine's grain-exporting infrastructure in the southern Odesa and Mykolayiv regions after it pulled out of a UN-brokered deal allowing safe grain shipments via the Black Sea in July.
Elsewhere in the south of Ukraine, the Kherson military administration reported that shelling had intensified. Regional Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said Russia attacked the town of Beryslav on the right bank of the Dnieper River, killing at least one person.
“The information is being clarified,” he added in a Telegram post.
Serhiy Lysak, governor of the east-central Dnipropetrovsk region, said falling debris from a downed drone caused a fire at an industrial enterprise in Kriviy Rih, Zelenskiy's hometown.
There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.