Russia strikes Ukraine grain port after exiting export deal
Russia struck Ukrainian ports on Tuesday, a day after pulling out of a UN-backed deal to let Kyiv export grain, and Moscow claimed gains on the ground in an area where Ukrainian officials said Russian forces were going back on the offensive.
Russia said it hit fuel storage in Odesa and a plant making seaborne drones there, as part of “mass revenge strikes” in retaliation for attacks by Ukraine that knocked out its road bridge to the Crimean Peninsula, Reuters reported.
Shortly after the bridge was hit on Monday, Moscow withdrew from a year-old UN-brokered grain export deal, a move the UN said risked creating hunger around the world. “Today’s decision by the Russian Federation will strike a blow to people in need everywhere,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Monday.
Falling debris and blast waves damaged several homes and unspecified port infrastructure in one of Ukraine’s main ports, Odesa, according to Ukraine’s southern operational military command. Local authorities in Mykolaiv, another port, described a serious fire there.
Ukraine’s air force said six Kalibr missiles and 31 out of 36 drones were shot down. Moscow, for its part, said it had foiled a Ukrainian drone strike on Crimea, with no major damage on the ground, and reopened a single lane of road traffic on the Crimea bridge.
Six weeks since Ukraine launched a counteroffensive in the east and south, Russia is mounting a ground offensive of its own in the northeast.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said its forces had advanced 2 km in the vicinity of Kupiansk, a frontline railway hub recaptured by Ukraine in an offensive last year. Kyiv acknowledged a “complicated” situation in the area. Since Ukraine began its counteroffensive last month, Kyiv has recaptured some villages in the south and territory around the ruined city of Bakhmut in the east, but has yet to attempt a major breakthrough across heavily defended Russian lines.
The Black Sea grain export deal brokered a year ago by Turkey and the UN was one of the only diplomatic successes of the war, lifting a de facto Russian blockade of Ukrainian ports and heading off a global food emergency.
Russia told Turkey on Tuesday that it was disbanding a coordination centre in Istanbul and lifting security guarantees for cargo ships following Moscow’s exit from the deal, AFP reported.
“The implementation of grain agreements has been terminated,” the Foreign Ministry said after Russia’s top diplomat Sergei Lavrov spoke to his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan.
Moscow’s exit from the deal means “the dissolution of the Joint Coordination Center in Istanbul” and the lifting of “safe navigation guarantees”, among other conditions, the ministry said in a statement.
Ukraine and Russia are both among the world’s biggest exporters of grain and other foodstuffs. If Ukrainian grain is again blocked from the market, prices could soar around the world, hitting the poorest countries hardest.
Moscow spurned calls from Ukraine to allow shipping to resume without Russian participation, with the Kremlin openly saying ships entering the area without its guarantees would be in danger.
Russia says it could return to the grain deal, but only if its demands are met for rules to be eased for its own exports of food and fertiliser.