Russia attacks Odessa port, raising doubts over grain export deal OLASMEDIA TV NEWSThis is what we have for you today:
ODESA, Ukraine – A series of explosions startled the southern city of Odessa on Saturday, hitting one of the country’s main ports, less than 24 hours after Russia and Ukraine signed an agreement to ban the transit of millions of tons of grain through the Black Sea. secure routes.
The strikes raised concerns about Russia’s commitment to the agreement, which had been brokered by the United Nations and Turkey before it could even go into effect. The deal is seen as crucial to bolstering global supplies after a sharp drop in Ukrainian grain exports fueled fears of food shortages in poorer countries.
The series of explosions was also a stark reminder of Russia’s violent foothold from the five-month-old war: signals from Moscow that it could arbitrarily destroy any part of Ukraine, regardless of the military situation on the front lines or diplomatic breakthroughs elsewhere.
While denouncing the attack and branding Russia as untrustworthy, Ukrainian officials said they continued to prepare for the grain deal to come into effect.
Ukraine’s southern military command said on Saturday that Russian forces had fired four Kalibr cruise missiles at Odessa. “Two missiles were shot down by air defense forces, two hit port infrastructure facilities,” it wrote in a statement on its Facebook page. It was unclear what the strikes were targeting and whether grain infrastructure was affected.
If confirmed, the use of the Kalibr cruise missile, a newer ordnance the Russians have deployed over the past decade, is remarkable in itself: Western intelligence officials have said in recent weeks that Russia’s stockpile of advanced weapons like the Kalibr has been dwindling.
Ukraine’s condemnation of Saturday’s rocket attack came swiftly. Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko said on Facebook that with the strikes, Russia’s President Vladimir V. Putin had “in the face of United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.” spat” after the two “made a huge effort to come to this agreement.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, informing a delegation from the US House of Representatives, said the strike “proves only one thing: whatever Russia says and promises, it will find ways not to carry it out.”
The deputy spokesman for the United Nations Secretary-General denounced the strikes, saying in a statement that full implementation of the agreement was “necessary”.
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And Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said in a statement that the attack “cast serious doubts on the credibility of Russia’s commitment to yesterday’s deal” and demonstrated “Moscow’s disregard for the safety and security of millions of citizens.”
There was no immediate comment from the Kremlin. The attack came a day before the Russian foreign minister was due to embark on a tour of Africa, where he is expected to try to blame the West for food shortages.
The blast wave from the rockets hitting the harbor could be felt from miles away, though it was unclear exactly where they hit. The huge harbor stretches for miles along the coast of Odessa with towering silver grain silos clustered in several places. The attack, like many long-range attacks targeting Ukrainian infrastructure, will do little to halt the port’s overall operations, but could provide the necessary resources to repair structures, extinguish fires and search for -exploded ammunition.
“If you attack a port, you attack everything,” Mykola Solskyi, the country’s agriculture minister, said in a telephone interview. “You use a lot of the same infrastructure for oil, for grain. It has an impact on everything – no matter what hits you.”
According to a senior UN official, Russia may not have technically violated the grain agreement, as it did not promise not to attack the parts of Ukraine’s ports not directly used for grain exports. If military targets were nearby, Russia may have tried to exploit a loophole, a practice that has become increasingly common over the course of the war.
Mr Solskyi said the strikes would nevertheless affect Ukraine’s grain export efforts, adding that some of the destroyed infrastructure was “important for processing all imports”.
But, he said, Ukraine would continue preparations to eventually ship the grain.
“We understand that we are still at war with Russia,” he said. “Our agreement was with the United Nations and Turkey, not with Russia.”
It is not the first time that Ukraine has accused Russia of not fulfilling its obligations. Ukraine has repeatedly alleged that Russia is violating ongoing negotiations on agreed humanitarian evacuation routes for civilians in besieged cities, such as Mariupol. In some cases, Russian troops have allowed such corridors, but kidnapped or imprisoned men of military age who tried to flee.
The attack on Odessa is linked to a wider increase in attacks in southern Ukraine in recent weeks as Russian forces rebuild their forces in the east. Russian and Ukrainian forces both launched long-range weapon attacks in the south from night to Saturday, apparently targeting supply lines and anti-aircraft weapons behind the front lines on both sides.
Updated
July 23, 2022, 6:30 p.m. ET
Fighting in the east continues unabated and on Friday the US State Department confirmed the deaths of two Americans there but did not identify them out of respect for their families.
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, said Russian attacks had caused 10 explosions in Odessa and that the attacks on the port had started a fire.
Josep Borrell Fontelles, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, condemned Saturday’s strikes. say on Twitter That “hit a critical target for grain exports in Istanbul one day after the signing of the agreements is deeply reprehensible and demonstrates once again Russia’s utter disregard for international law and obligations.”
Lacking a public statement about the attack on the port of Odessa, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar told reporters on Saturday that Russia told Turkey it had nothing to do with the attacks on Odessa.
Still, he said: “The fact that such an incident happened right after the grain deal we closed yesterday is also a matter of great concern to us.”
Since the beginning of the war, on February 24, the port of Odessa has been frozen in time. Bales of steel remain stacked on loading docks ready for shipment, and multicolored cranes sit inert like huge slumbering birds.
In Odessa, as well as in the region’s five other major ports, 68 ships have run aground along with some of their crew members, said Dmytro Barinov, the deputy head of the Ukrainian Seaport Authority. The port authority has supplied the seamen with food and given them access to air raid shelters when the sirens of an air raid sound, he said.
In return, the crews continue to operate the ships.
“You can’t leave a ship alone,” Mr. Barinov said. “It has to be maintained.
Founded by Catherine the Great at the height of the Russian Empire, Odessa has long been a crucial economic engine for Ukraine. Before the war, the city was Ukraine’s main outlet for the global economy, and reopening its port infrastructure is crucial for the country’s future financial viability.
So far, the city has been spared the worst fighting. Initially, it appeared that Russian troops leaving the Crimean peninsula in the early days of the war were out to take Odessa, which, according to President Vladimir V. Putin, is a crucial part of Russia’s historical territory. But their advance was blunted by the Ukrainian resistance.
Unable to reach the city, Russian troops resorted to a remote attack.
Erika Solomon reported from Berlin. Thomas Gibbons-Neff contributed from Hope, Maine, and Matina Stevis-Gridneff contributed from Brussels.