Russia hits Ukrainian Black Sea port after grain deal, #Russia #hits #Ukraine #Black #Seaport OLASMEDIA TV NEWSThis is what we have for you today:
Kyiv, Ukraine — Russian missiles hit Odessa, Ukraine’s Black Sea port city, hours after Moscow and Kiev signed agreements to resume grain exports from there. Ukraine’s foreign ministry denounced Saturday’s strike as “spit in the face” of Turkey and the United Nations, which signed the agreements.
Two Russian Kalibr cruise missiles hit the infrastructure of the port and Ukrainian air defenses shot down two others, the Southern Command of the Ukrainian army said. It did not specify the damage or say whether the strike caused any casualties.
“It took less than 24 hours for Russia to launch a missile attack on the port of Odessa, breaking its promises and undermining its obligations to the UN and Turkey under the Istanbul Agreement,” said Oleg Nikolenko, spokesman for Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Foreign Affairs. “In case of non-compliance, Russia will bear full responsibility for a global food crisis.”
Nikolenko described the rocket attack on the 150th day of Russia’s war in Ukraine as a “spit in the face of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who have made great efforts to reach an agreement.”
A Ukrainian police officer checks the documents of a man and woman riding their bicycles as he patrols during the nighttime curfew, at a checkpoint in the Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, Friday, July 22, 2022.
Nariman El-Mofty/AP
Guterres’ office has issued a statement saying the UN chief “unequivocally condemns” the strikes.
“Yesterday, all parties on the world stage made clear commitments to ensure the safe movement of Ukrainian grain and related products to world markets,” the statement said. “These products are desperately needed to tackle the global food crisis and alleviate the suffering of millions of people in need around the world. Full implementation by the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Turkey is imperative.”
In a statement obtained by CBS News on Saturday afternoon, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he “strongly condemns the attack”, adding that it “casts serious doubts on the credibility of Russia’s commitment to yesterday’s deal and undermining the work of the UN, Turkey, and Ukraine to get critical food into global markets.”
“Russia bears the responsibility for deepening the global food crisis and must stop its aggression and fully implement the deal it has agreed to,” Blinken wrote.
At a signing ceremony on Friday in Istanbul, Guterres praised the deals to open Ukraine’s ports in Odessa, Chernomorsk and Yuzhny to commercial food exports as “a beacon of hope, a beacon of opportunity, a beacon of enlightenment in a world that is more than need. ever.”
The agreements were intended to pave the way for the shipment of millions of tons of Ukrainian grain and some of Russia’s grain and fertilizer exports held up by the war. Ukraine is one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat, corn and sunflower oil, but the Russian invasion of the country and the naval blockade of its ports have halted shipments.
Documents obtained by The Associated Press showed the deals called for a UN-led joint coordination center in Istanbul, where officials from Ukraine, Russia and Turkey would oversee cargo ship planning and searches.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his overnight video address that the agreements “presented an opportunity to avert a global catastrophe – a famine that could lead to political chaos in many countries of the world, particularly those that help us “.
The head of Zelenskyy’s office, Andriy Yermak, said on Twitter that the strike in Odessa that came so soon after the agreement on the Black Sea ports was approved illustrated “Russia’s diplomatic dichotomy”.
Along with the attack on Odessa, the Russian army fired a barrage of rockets at an airport and railway facility in central Ukraine on Saturday, killing at least three people, as Ukrainian forces launched missile strikes at river crossings in a Russian-occupied southern region. region.
The attacks on key infrastructure marked new efforts by the warring factions to scale the grinding conflict in their advantage.
In Ukraine’s central Kirovohradska region, 13 Russian missiles hit an airport and a railway facility. Governor Andriy Raikovych said at least one soldier and two guards were killed. The regional government reported that strikes near the town of Kirovohrad injured another 13 people.
In the southern region of Kherson, occupied by Russian forces early in the invasion, Ukrainian forces are preparing for a possible counteroffensive fired rockets at the Dnieper crossings to try to disrupt supplies to the Russians.
Despite progress on that front, fighting continued unabated in the industrial heart of the Donbas in eastern Ukraine, where Russian forces tried to make new gains despite fierce Ukrainian resistance.
Russian forces have also faced Ukrainian counter-attacks, but largely held their own in the Kherson region, just north of the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014.
Earlier this week, the Ukrainians bombed the Antonivskyi Bridge over the Dnieper River using the US-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systemsaid Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Russian-appointed regional administration in Kherson.
Stremousov told Russian state news agency Tass that the only other crossing of the Dnieper, the dam of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station, was also attacked by missiles launched with the weapons supplied by Washington, but was not damaged.
HIMARS, which fires GPS-guided missiles at targets 80 kilometers (50 miles) away, a distance that keeps it out of reach of most Russian artillery systems, has significantly bolstered Ukraine’s strike capability.
In addition, Ukrainian troops shelled a car bridge over the Inhulets River in the village of Darivka, Stremousov told Tass. He said the bridge just east of the regional capital Kherson suffered seven blows but remained open to traffic.
Stremousov said that the small bridge in Darivka, unlike the Antonivskyi bridge, has no strategic value.
Since April, the Kremlin has focused on conquering the Donbas, a largely Russian-speaking area in eastern Ukraine where pro-Russian separatists have declared independence.
However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed on Wednesday that Moscow intends to maintain control over other areas occupied by its forces during the war.