Ukraine moved forward on Sunday with efforts to restart grain exports from its Black Sea ports under a deal aimed at easing global food shortages, but warned that deliveries would suffer if Russia’s Odesa strike the day before was a sign of more.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denounced Saturday’s attack as “barbarism” that showed Moscow could not be trusted to implement a deal reached just a day earlier with Turkish and United Nations mediation.
The Ukrainian military, quoted by public broadcaster Suspilne, said the Russian missiles did not hit the port’s grain storage area or cause significant damage, and Kyiv said preparations to resume shipments of cereals were in progress.
“We continue technical preparations for the launch of exports of agricultural products from our ports,” Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said in a Facebook post.
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.
Russia said on Sunday that its forces had hit a Ukrainian warship and a weapons depot in Odesa with its high-precision missiles.
The agreement signed by Moscow and Kyiv on Friday was hailed as a diplomatic breakthrough that would help curb rising global food prices, and UN officials said it could restore Ukrainian grain shipments to levels before the war of five million tons per month.
Firefighters work to put out a fire in the port of Odesa. The strike was condemned by the United Nations, the European Union, the US, the UK, Germany and Italy. (State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Reuters)
But Zelenskyy’s economic adviser warned on Sunday that the Odesa strike indicated it may be out of reach.
“Yesterday’s strike indicates that it will definitely not work like that,” Oleh Ustenko told Ukrainian television.
He said Ukraine did have the capacity to export 60 million tonnes of grain over the next nine months, but it would take up to 24 months if operations at its ports were disrupted.
The war enters its 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.
Anton, a teacher, walks through the ruins of a school destroyed by shelling in Bakhmut, Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, on Sunday. (Igor Tkachev/AFP/Getty Images)
The military said in a Sunday evening briefing that the Russians are continuing efforts to assert control over the area around the Vuhlehirsk power plant, which is 50 kilometers northeast of Donetsk, in the donbàs The memo also listed several dozen settlements along the entire front line that it said had been bombed by Russia in the past 24 hours.
Four Russian Kalibr cruise missiles fired from the Black Sea and aimed at the western Khmelnytskyi region were shot down on Sunday, the Ukrainian Air Command reported.
Although the main theater of combat has been the Donbas, the Ukrainian military said its forces have moved within firing range of Russian targets in the occupied eastern Black Sea region of Kherson, where Kyiv is organizing a counter-offensive.
Reuters could not immediately verify reports from the battlefield.
In his late-night video address on Sunday, Zelenskyy struck an upbeat tone ahead of the celebration of a new national holiday on July 28.
“Even the occupiers admit that we will win. We hear it in their conversations all the time. In what they say to their relatives when they call,” he said.
In another development, Ukraine’s health ministry said at least 18 medical personnel had been killed and nearly 900 medical facilities damaged or destroyed by the Russian invasion. In a social media post on Sunday, the ministry said 123 medical facilities have been totally destroyed by Russian forces, while another 746 needed repairs.
Death of the Canadian
Meanwhile, Global Affairs Canada said Sunday it was aware of the death of a Canadian in Ukraine.
“Consular officials are in contact with the family and are providing consular assistance,” spokeswoman Marilyne Guèvremont said in a statement to CBC News. “Due to privacy considerations, no further information can be disclosed.”
An armored convoy of Russian troops drives along a road in the Russian part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region on Saturday. (Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)
The Odesa strike was condemned by the United Nations, the European Union, the United States, Great Britain, Germany and Italy.
Russian news agencies quoted Russia’s defense ministry as saying that a Ukrainian warship and US-supplied anti-ship missiles were destroyed.
“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.
Safe passage for ships
Friday’s agreement aims to allow safe passage in and out of Ukrainian ports, which have been blockaded by Russia’s Black Sea fleet since Moscow’s February 24 invasion, in what a UN official called a “stop de facto fire” for ships and covered installations.
Ukraine and Russia are the world’s top wheat exporters, and the blockade has trapped tens of millions of tonnes of the grain, worsening bottlenecks in the global supply chain.
Along with Western sanctions on Russia, it has fueled food and energy price inflation, pushing an estimated 47 million people into “acute hunger,” according to the United Nations World Food Program.
The attack in Odesa came just hours after Moscow and Kyiv signed agreements to allow grain exports to resume from there. (Joint Southern Defense Forces Press Service/Reuters)
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 Friday’s agreement, pilots will guide ships through safe channels.
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.
Russian President Vladimir 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.