ruins. our cnn team on the ground captured some of the strikes that happened in the dark of night. you can see them lighting up the night sky. the flashes part of the 38 air strikes, air attacks that the ukrainian air force counted and ukraine said they were able to intercept and take out 18 of them. russia attacks also rained down on mick lieia. alex marquardt is on the ground in odesa with a look at the damage. reporter: this city has never seen anything like this since the beginning of the war. i can t overstate the terror the citizens have over the last three nights. i want to show you some of the destruction from last night. this is an administrative building. it looks like it was around four stories high. you can see it has completely collapsed.
and more importantly, the russian general also said there s, quote, evidence of oppression of the russian-speaking population in moldova. that s the same lie used by putin to justify the initial invasion of ukraine. it s also part of the justification used by hitler as rational for his initial conquests in 1939. of course, part of this plan, or at least for any of it to succeed, russia would need to find more success in the donbas, which is another area heavily populated with russian-backed separatists. it would also like to take the city of mick lieia and then odessa, a large city of about 1 million people. with the exception of the azovstal, the steel factory in mariupol. russia appears to be nearing
central ukraine and other sites in western ukraine along the nato border, including one 120 miles from where i am in hungary. the key southern city of mick lieia remains under seas, with new strikes hitting a cancer hospital, shopping center and cafe according to the ukrainian government. in a new statement the ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy said the mayor of a town in southern ukraine has been forcibly abducted by russian forces. and mass civilian deaths are expected. the city has been under constant attack and cut off electric electricity, water, gas, food, medical and other supplies for more than a week and all communications with the city are essentially cut off, something i ve had confirmed by refugees i met from that area. they can t contact their families back home. residents have been told to place bodies of the deceased, family, friends, neighbors in