July 18, 2023

Russia struck Ukraine’s port of Odesa with missiles and drones on Tuesday, a day after pulling out of a U.N.-backed deal to let Kyiv export grain, and Ukrainian officials said Moscow was attempting to go back on the offensive in the east.

Russian attacks on Ukraine’s ports followed a pledge by Moscow to retaliate for blasts on Russia’s road bridge to the occupied Crimean Peninsula, knocked out on Monday by what Moscow said were strikes by Ukrainian seaborne drones.

Shortly after the bridge was hit on Monday, Moscow pulled out of the year-old U.N.-brokered grain export deal, a move the United Nations said risked creating hunger around the world.

Russia’s overnight attacks on Ukraine’s ports were “further proof that the country-terrorist wants to endanger the lives of 400 million people in various countries that depend on Ukrainian food exports,” Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s presidential staff, said on Telegram.

Ukraine’s air force said six Kalibr missiles and 31 out of 36 drones, were shot down, mostly over the coastal Odesa and Mykolaiv regions in the south.

Ukraine’s southern operational military command said falling debris and blast waves damaged several homes and unspecified port infrastructure in Odesa, but gave few details. Local authorities in Mykolaiv, another port, described a serious fire there.

Moscow, for its part, said it had foiled a Ukrainian drone strike on Crimea, with no major damage on the ground. It said a single lane of road traffic had reopened on the Crimea bridge.

Ukraine launched a counteroffensive last month and has recaptured some villages in the south and territory around the ruined city of Bakhmut in the east, but has yet to attempt a major breakthrough across heavily defended Russian lines.

Ukrainian commanders said Russian forces were now attempting to return to the offensive north of Bakhmut in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, along a strip of the front line in territory recaptured by Ukraine last year.

‘A BLOW TO PEOPLE IN NEED’
The Black Sea grain export deal brokered a year ago by Turkey and the United Nations was one of the only diplomatic successes of the war, lifting a de facto Russian blockade of Ukrainian ports and heading off a global food emergency.

Ukraine and Russia are both among the world’s biggest exporters of grain and other foodstuffs. If Ukrainian grain is again blocked from the market, prices could soar around the world, hitting the poorest countries hardest.

“Today’s decision by the Russian Federation will strike a blow to people in need everywhere,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters on Monday.

Russia says it could return to the grain deal, but only if its demands are met for rules to be eased for its own exports of food and fertiliser. Western countries call that an attempt to use leverage over food supplies to force a weakening in financial sanctions, which already provide exceptions to allow Russia to sell food.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called for the grain deal to continue without Russia’s participation, effectively seeking Turkey’s backing to negate the Russian blockade. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, the deal’s sponsor, says he thinks Moscow can be persuaded to return.

Any attempt to reopen Ukrainian grain shipments without Russia’s participation would probably depend on insurance companies agreeing to provide coverage. Industry sources have told Reuters they are considering the implications.

SLOW COUNTEROFFENSIVE
Ukraine’s counteroffensive has made limited gains near Bakhmut and along two major axes in the south, but its new assault force equipped with billions of dollars worth of new Western weapons and ammunition has yet to confront the main Russian defensive line.

Kyiv says it is deliberately advancing slowly to avoid high casualties crossing fortified defensive lines strewn with landmines, and is focused for now on degrading Russia’s logistics and command. In recent days, Ukrainian commanders have also said they are fending off an attempt by Moscow to mount a new offensive of its own in the northeast.

“For two days running, the enemy has been actively on the offensive in the Kupiansk sector in Kharkiv region,” Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar wrote on Telegram.

“We are defending. Heavy fighting is going on and the positions of both sides change dynamically several times a day.”

Serhiy Cherevatyi, spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern grouping of forces, said the Russian military had amassed more than 100,000 troops and more than 900 tanks in the area.

Reuters could not independently verify the reports of the battlefield in the area.

REUTERS