By Natalia Zinets and Max Hunder
KYIV (Reuters) – Ukraine forged ahead with efforts to restart grain exports from its Black Sea ports under a deal aimed at easing global food shortages but warned deliveries would suffer if a Russian missile strike on Odesa was a sign of more to come.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy denounced Saturday’s attack as “barbarism” showing Moscow could not be trusted to implement a deal struck 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. Kyiv said preparations to resume grain shipments were ongoing.
“We continue technical preparations for the launch of exports of agricultural products from our ports,” Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said in a Facebook post.
The Ukrainian military said two Kalibr missiles fired from Russian warships hit the area of a pumping station at the port and two others were shot down by air defence forces.
Russia said on Sunday its forces had hit a Ukrainian warship and a weapons store in Odesa with precision missiles.
The deal signed by Moscow and Kyiv on Friday was hailed as a diplomatic breakthrough that would help curb soaring global food prices by restoring Ukrainian grain shipments to pre-war levels of 5 million tonnes a month.
But Zelenskiy’s economic advisor, Oleh Ustenko, told Ukrainian television the strike “indicates that it will definitely not work like that”.
He said Ukraine could export 60 million tonnes of grain over the next nine months, but it would take up to 24 months if its ports’ operations were disrupted.
WAR ENTERS SIXTH MONTH
There was no sign of a let-up in the fighting on Monday as Russia announced plans to investigate war crimes it claims have been committed by Ukrainian forces.
The Ukrainian military reported widespread Russian shelling and again referred to Russian operations paving the way for an assault on Bakhmut in the eastern Donbas region.
The military said in a briefing note that the Russians carried out air strikes near the Vuhlehirsk power plant, 50 kms (31 miles) northeast of Donetsk.
While the main theatre of combat has been the Donbas, Ukraine’s military reported progress in a counter offensive in the occupied eastern Black Sea region of Kherson, where their forces have moved within firing range of Russian targets.
Russian commanders continue to face a dilemma – whether to resource an offensive in the east, or to bolster their defences, Britain’s defence ministry said on Twitter.
Reuters could not immediately verify the battlefield reports.
Moscow has charged 92 members of Ukrainian armed forces with crimes against humanity and proposed a new international tribunal that would handle the investigation, Alexander Bastrykin, the head of Russia’s investigative committee, said in remarks published overnight.
The announcement comes after the United States and more than 40 other countries agreed on July 14 to coordinate investigations into suspected war crimes in Ukraine, mostly concerning alleged actions by Russian forces and their proxies.
SAFE PASSAGE
The strikes on Odesa drew condemnation from the United Nations, the European Union, the United States, Britain, Germany and Italy.
Russian news agencies quoted Russia’s defence ministry as saying a Ukrainian warship and U.S. supplied anti-ship missiles were destroyed.
Friday’s deal aims to allow safe passage in and out of Ukrainian ports, blocked by Russia’s Black Sea fleet since Moscow’s Feb. 24 invasion, in what one U.N. official called a “de facto ceasefire” for the ships and facilities covered.
Ukraine and Russia are major global wheat exporters and the blockade has trapped tens of millions of tonnes of grain, worsening global supply chain bottlenecks.
Along with Western sanctions on Russia, it has stoked food and energy price inflation, driving some 47 million people into “acute hunger,” according to the World Food Programme.
Moscow denies responsibility for the food crisis, blaming the sanctions for slowing its food and fertiliser exports and Ukraine for mining the approaches to its ports.
Ukraine has mined waters near its ports as part of its war defences but under Friday’s deal pilots will guide ships along safe channels.
A Joint Coordination Center staffed by members of the four parties to the agreement will monitor ships passing the Black Sea to Turkey’s Bosporus Strait and on to world markets. All sides agreed on Friday there would be no attacks on them.
Putin calls the war a “special military operation” aimed at demilitarising Ukraine and rooting out dangerous nationalists. Kyiv and the West call this a baseless pretext for an aggressive land grab.
(Reporting by Natalia Zinets and Max Hunder in Kyiv, Tom Balmforth, Elaine Monaghan and Reuters bureaux; Writing by Lawrence Hurley and Stephen Coates; Editing by Diane Craft and Simon Cameron-Moore)
