For the fourth day in a row, Russia is working to destroy Ukraine’s grain export potential by bombing port terminals and grain silos in Odessa. The Defense Ministry insists that such attacks are retaliation for the water drone raid launched by Ukraine on Monday against the Kerch bridge. At the same time, the Navy has launched firing exercises in the Black Sea in a clear intimidating signal to dissuade Kiev from any forceful action against its ships that will meet with a drastic response.
Ukraine warned yesterday that, from this Friday, it will consider hostile any ship heading towards Russian ports or those terminals located in the occupied Ukrainian territories. The same measure, but in relation to vessels sailing to Ukrainian ports suspected of carrying military cargo, was adopted by Moscow on Wednesday. The swords cannot be higher after the Kremlin’s refusal to prolong the grain export agreement.
The Russian Defense Ministry announces in a statement that the Black Sea Fleet’s ongoing naval exercises consist of firing exercises against simulated targets in order to “isolate the area temporarily closed to shipping.” The military note states that “the capture of an intruder ship was tested and it was fired at a floating target.” “The crew of the missile ship ‘Ivánovets’ conducted combat fire with anti-ship cruise missiles at a target ship in a training area in the northwestern part of the Black Sea” which was “destroyed,” the ministry added. At the same time, Russian and Chinese warships are engaged in exercises in the Sea of Japan, during which, according to the TASS agency, they “destroyed a false floating mine and repelled an attack by an enemy high-speed floating object.”
Ukrainian ports are located on the coast of the northwestern part of the Black Sea. US administration officials have speculated in recent days that Russia could launch attacks on civilian ships. But the Russian ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, has rejected such assumptions, noting that “attempts to attribute to Russia the preparation of attacks against civilian ships are a forgery.”
Last morning, the grain silos in Odessa were attacked with two Russian “Kalibr” missiles from a ship located in the Black Sea. This is stated by the head of the local Military Administration, Oleg Kiper, who confirmed that this is the “fourth attack against the Odessa region so far this week.” According to Kiper, the bombardment “has destroyed 100 tons of peas, 20 tons of barley and injured two people.”
The spokeswoman for the Southern Operational Command of the Ukrainian Army, Natalia Gumeniuk, has assured in a television appearance that the two Russian rockets have practically destroyed the facilities of an agricultural company in Odessa, almost all the equipment and even two fire trucks. The explosions have caused a huge fire. Gumeniuk explained that “the missiles were fired according to a complicated trajectory and at a low altitude, which prevented their detection and destruction.”
In the opinion of analysts from the US Institute for the Study of War (ISW), the current attacks on grain infrastructure in Ukraine and the threats to attack merchant ships seek to provoke an “emergency” situation that allows Russia to return to the grain export agreement, but “under more favorable conditions”, thus further jeopardizing its international image before African countries, affected by the cessation of exports and which until now have been supporting Moscow. According to the ISW, these actions “show that the Kremlin is ready to use the Navy and precision weapons to solve pressing economic problems, not specifically for military operations in Ukraine.”
UN condemnation
In this regard, the spokesman for the UN Secretary General, Stéphane Dujarric, has shown the concern of the United Nations about this situation. “All of this is not leading us in the right direction. What is happening there is also having a negative effect on the prices of wheat and corn… », he deplored at a press conference.
“We have seen the fluctuations in prices. They go up and down. That is not good for the market, and what is not good for the market is bad for people in a vulnerable situation, who cannot afford food, who cannot afford increases in food prices. Most of them are in the global south,” Dujarric noted. The Secretary General, António Guterres, has also condemned the Russian attacks and Moscow’s withdrawal from the grain pact, signed with the mediation of the United Nations and Turkey, since it had promised “to facilitate the unhindered export of food, sunflower oil and fertilizers from the Black Sea ports controlled by Ukraine”.
On the other hand, four people died in the last hours in the Zaporizhia region due to Russian bombing, according to the head of the local Military Administration, Yuri Malashko. According to his information, “during the last day, the enemy launched eighty attacks against twenty towns.” As a result of the shelling, Malashko added, “at a civilian infrastructure facility in the Pologovsky district, four employees (aged 29-43) were killed and two people had to be hospitalized.”
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