// BBC WORLD NEWS — MONDO
In Odesa, no-one is safe from Russia's new Black Sea strikes
Russian missiles and drones are hammering Ukraine's Black Sea ports, like Odesa
"My crane operator, my partner, died five metres from me… The driver remained in the cabin. He also died."
Svitlana Halchenko winces as she remembers the Russian ballistic missile which exploded at work in Odesa, killing her colleagues.
Svitlana works as a warehouse shift manager at the city's main port.
Despite her injuries – she walks with a limp, pieces of shrapnel still embedded in her leg and back – Svitlana is determined to keep working.
But her normally bustling workplace is largely silent.
Russia is ramping up its efforts to strangle Ukraine's commercial links to the outside world, launching attacks all along the country's Black Sea coastline.
From damaged port infrastructure to listing ships with bridges blackened and containers still smouldering, the evidence is everywhere. Nowhere more so than out towards the horizon, where the approaches to Ukraine's once bustling ports – Odesa, Chornomorsk, Pivdennyi – are almost devoid of ships.
Svitlana maintains a brave smile throughout our conversation, but her distress is painfully obvious. Her fingers constantly twist a tissue as she tries to maintain her composure and she gazes into the distance as tears well up behind her glasses.
"It's been very difficult for morale," she says with a deep sigh. "A lot of sirens, a lot of shaheds [drones], a lot of hits. People are very tense."