On Friday, UN officials had said they expected the deal to be operational within weeks.
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.
Turkey’s defense minister said Russian officials told Ankara that Moscow had “nothing to do” with the strikes. Neither Russian defense ministry statements nor the military’s evening briefing mentioned the missile attacks in Odesa. The ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
Two Russian Kalibr missiles hit the area of a pumping station in the port, and two more were shot down by air defense forces, according to Ukraine’s military. Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuriy Ignat said the missiles were fired from warships in the Black Sea near Crimea.
Suspilne quoted Ukraine’s southern military command as saying the port’s grain storage area was not affected.
“Unfortunately there are injured. The infrastructure of the port was damaged,” said Odesa Region Governor Maksym Marchenko.
But Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said on Facebook that “we continue technical preparations for the launch of exports of agricultural products from our ports.”
The deal would restore grain shipments from the three reopened ports to prewar levels of 5 million tons a month, UN officials said.
A paramedic attends to an injured man in an ambulance after a Russian attack on the Barabashovo market in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Thursday. Credit: AP
Safe step
The strikes appeared to violate Friday’s agreement, which would allow safe passage in and out of Ukrainian ports.
Zelensky promised to do everything possible to acquire air defense systems capable of shooting down missiles like those that hit Odesa.
A blockade of Ukrainian ports by the Russian Black Sea Fleet since Moscow’s February 24 invasion has trapped tens of millions of tons of grain and grounded many ships.
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This has worsened bottlenecks in the global supply chain. Along with Western sanctions on Russia, it has fueled inflation in food and energy prices. Russia and Ukraine are the world’s main suppliers of wheat, and a global food crisis has pushed some 47 million people into “acute hunger,” according to the World Food Program.
Moscow denies responsibility for the food crisis, blaming Western sanctions for slowing its food and fertilizer exports and Ukraine for exploiting approaches to its ports.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that the Odesa attack “casts serious doubt on the credibility of Russia’s commitment to yesterday’s agreement”.
“Russia bears responsibility for deepening the global food crisis and must stop its aggression,” he added.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “unequivocally condemned” the strikes, a spokesman said, adding that full implementation of the agreement was imperative.
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Turkish Defense Minister Hulusai Akar said in a statement: “The Russians told us that they had absolutely nothing to do with this attack… The fact that such an incident took place right after the agreement that we did yesterday worried us a lot.”
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.
A joint coordination center made up of members of the four parties to the agreement is to monitor ships transiting the Black Sea to Turkey’s Bosphorus strait and on to global markets. All parties agreed on Friday that there would be no attacks against these entities.
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.
A US congressional delegation that met with Zelensky in Kyiv pledged continued support.
Adam Smith, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that Washington and its allies intended to provide more multiple rocket launch systems.
Reuters
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