site.btaExplosions Rattle Odesa Tuesday Night

Several explosions shook Odesa Tuesday night. The sirens in Odesa and Odesa Oblast went off at 20:34 hrs and continue to wail.

"Odesa and Odessa Region, don't ignore the air raid alert, stay in shelters until it's completely lifted," said Odesa regional military administration chairman Oleg Kipper on the Telegram app.

Bulgarians Marina Malenkova, Natalia Savova and Vitaly Dimitrov, who live there, told BTA about several loud explosions in the Peresipsky district of Odesa.

The Bulgarian community in the Odessa region is the third largest, numbering more than 150,000 people, according to the official 2001 census in Ukraine. About 50,000 - 60,000 Bulgarians live in Odesa.