- Moscow and Kyiv had signed a grain export agreement on Friday
- The agreement had sought to avert a major global food crisis
- Zelenskiy: Attack shows Moscow can’t be trusted with deal
Kyiv, July 24 (Reuters) – Ukraine moved forward on Sunday with efforts to restart grain exports from Black Sea ports after a missile attack in Odesa raised doubts about whether Russia would honor a deal aimed at easing world food shortage caused by war.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy denounced Saturday’s strikes as “barbarism” that showed Moscow could not be trusted to implement a deal reached just a day earlier with Turkish and United Nations mediation.
Public broadcaster Suspilne quoted the Ukrainian military as saying after the attack that the missiles did not hit the port’s grain storage area or cause significant damage, and Kyiv said preparations to resume the grain shipments were underway.
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“We continue technical preparations for the launch of exports of agricultural products from our ports,” Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said in a Facebook post.
Russia said on Sunday that its forces had hit a Ukrainian warship and a weapons depot in Odesa with missiles.
The agreement signed by Moscow and Kyiv was hailed as a diplomatic breakthrough that would help curb rising global food prices by restoring grain shipments from Ukrainian ports to pre-war levels of 5 million tons per month Read more
But Zelenskiy’s economic adviser said on Sunday that the Odesa strike showed that deliveries could still be seriously disrupted.
“Yesterday’s strike indicates that it will definitely not work like that,” Oleh Ustenko told Ukrainian television.
While Ukraine had the capacity to export 60 million tonnes of grain over the next nine months, that could take up to 24 months if its ports could not function properly, he said. Read more
WAR ENTERS SIXTH MONTH
As the war entered its sixth month on Sunday, there were no signs of a lull in the fighting.
The Ukrainian military reported Russian shelling in the north, south and east, again referring to Russian operations that paved the way for an assault on Bakhmut in the eastern Donbas region.
The air force command said its forces had shot down three Russian Kalibr cruise missiles fired from the Black Sea early Sunday and aimed at the western Khmelnytskiy region.
Although the main theater of combat has been the Donbas, Zelenskiy said in a video on Saturday that Ukrainian forces were advancing “step by step” into the occupied eastern Black Sea region of Kherson. Read more
The strikes in Odesa were condemned by the United Nations, the European Union, the United States, Great Britain, Germany and Italy.
Video released by the Ukrainian military showed firefighters battling a fire on an unidentified ship moored alongside a tugboat. Reuters was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the video or the date it was filmed.
Russian news agencies quoted the Russian Defense Ministry as saying that a Ukrainian warship and US-supplied anti-ship missiles were destroyed. Read more
“A docked Ukrainian warship and a warehouse with US-supplied Harpoon anti-ship missiles were destroyed by long-range precision-guided naval missiles in the Odesa seaport on the territory of a ship repair plant,” he said .
On Saturday, Turkey’s defense minister said Russian officials told Ankara that Moscow had “nothing to do” with the strikes.
According to the Ukrainian military, two Kalibr missiles fired from Russian warships hit the area of a pumping station in the port and two others were shot down by air defense forces.
SAFE STEP
The strikes appeared to violate Friday’s agreement, which would allow safe passage in and out of Ukrainian ports.
Ukraine and Russia are major global exporters of wheat, and a blockade of Ukrainian ports by the Russian Black Sea Fleet since Moscow’s Feb. 24 invasion has trapped tens of millions of tons of grain, worsening bottlenecks of the global supply chain.
Along with Western sanctions on Russia, it has fueled food and energy price inflation, pushing some 47 million people into “acute hunger,” according to the World Food Program.
Moscow denies responsibility for the food crisis, blaming sanctions for slowing its food and fertilizer exports and Ukraine for exploiting approaches to its ports.
Ukraine has mined waters near its ports as part of its wartime defenses, but under the agreement the pilots will guide the ships through safe channels. Read more
A joint coordination center made up of members of the four parties to the agreement is to monitor ships passing through the Black Sea to Turkey’s Bosphorus strait and on to global markets. All sides agreed on Friday that there would be no attacks.
Putin calls the war a “special military operation” aimed at demilitarizing Ukraine and eliminating dangerous nationalists. Kyiv and the West call this a baseless pretext for an aggressive land grab.
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Reporting by Natalia Zinets in Kyiv, Tom Balmforth in London and Reuters offices; Written by Matt Spetalnick Simon Cameron-Moore and Tomasz Janowski; Editing by William Mallard and Angus MacSwan
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