LAST UPDATE | 19 Jul 2023
KYIV HAS SAID Russia destroyed 60,000 tonnes of grain meant for export in overnight strikes around the port of Odesa after accusing Moscow of purposefully hitting grain terminals.
Russia has fired missiles at Ukraine’s southern Odesa region for two nights in a row, hitting ports on the Black Sea after exiting the grain deal that allowed the safe passage of cargo ships.
Ukraine’s agriculture ministry said “60,000 tonnes of grain were also destroyed” in the port of Chornomorsk, outside Odesa.
It said the grain was meant to be “sent through the grain corridor 60 days ago.”
“The grain infrastructure of international and Ukrainian traders and carriers such as (Ukrainian) Kernel, (Canadian) Viterra and the (French) CMA CGM Group suffered the most,” the ministry said.
“The world’s food security is once again in danger,” it added.
On Monday, Russia refused to extend the UN-brokered grain deal that allowed for critical grain shipments.
Since exiting the deal, Moscow issued a veiled warning over the future of grain exports via the Black Sea after refusing to extend a key agreement allowing safe passage for cargo ships from Ukrainian ports.
“Without appropriate security guarantees, certain risks arise here (in the Black Sea),” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Were a new arrangement to allow for exports “formalised without Russia, then these risks should be taken into account”, he said.
The UN has warned that the world’s poorest would “pay the price” of the collapse of the deal and Western countries have deplored Moscow’s exit.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said earlier that Russia is “deliberately targeting the grain deal infrastructure.”
“Russian terrorists deliberately targeted the grain deal infrastructure, and every Russian missile is a blow not only to Ukraine, but to everyone in the world who wants a normal and safe life,” Zelensky said on Telegram.
The Office of the Prosecutor General said it was the largest attack on the Black Sea coast of Odesa so far and that 10 civilians, including a nine-year-old boy, had been injured.
Officials said grain terminals and infrastructure in the ports of Odesa and Chornomorsk had been attacked.
Kyiv said Russia had fired air, land and sea-based cruise missiles, including the Kalibr, and 32 Iranian-made drones.
Thirty seven air targets have been destroyed — including 13 Kalibr cruise missiles, one X-59 guided missile and 23 drones, the Ukrainian air force said.
Aside from the port infrastructure, a number of apartment buildings, hotels and warehouses have been damaged, officials said.
“The X-59 was shot down by air defence forces on its approach to the shore and crashed in one of Odesa’s neighbourhoods, creating a large crater, with the blast wave damaging several buildings around it,” said Oleg Kiper, head of the Odesa regional military administration.
Meanwhile, authorities have ordered the evacuation of more than 2,000 civilians after a fire broke out at a military training field in annexed Crimea.
The Russian-installed governor did not specify the cause of the blaze, but some Russian media reported that detonations were heard in the area and footage showed columns of black smoke in the sky.
It comes after Ukraine this week used waterborne drones to attack the Kerch bridge, a key military supply artery from mainland Russia to annexed Crimea.
“The temporary evacuation of residents of four localities adjacent to the military field in the Kirovsky district is planned. That’s more than 2,000 people,” said the Moscow-installed head of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been informed about the fire, the Kremlin said.
“Of course, this is reported to the president. (Crimea’s head Sergei) Aksyonov reacted very quickly. We know that there was a fire there,” Dmitry Peskov said.
A section of the Tavrida highway that crosses the peninsula had been closed due to the fire.
Footage posted on the Telegram account of state-backed Izvestia newspaper purporting to show footage of the fire showed plumes of black smoke billowing into the sky.
Several Russian online media outlets reported that detonations had been audible in the area for over two hours.
Bus traffic on interregional routes had been “temporarily redirected”, Nikolay Lukashenko, the head of Crimea’s transport ministry, wrote on messaging app Telegram.
The Tavrida highway connects the eastern Crimean port of Kerch to the port of Sevastopol on the peninsula’s Black Sea coast.
Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence denied that its head Kyrylo Budanov had issued a comment on the fire in Crimea.
Spokesman Andriy Yusov told broadcaster Suspilne that comments carried by several media outlets “that the explosion at the training ground in Crimea was the work of the armed forces and the GUR is a fake.”
Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 in a move not recognised by the international community.
Kyiv has repeatedly said it plans to take back the peninsula.
Elsewhere, the office of South African president Cyril Ramaphosa has confirmed that Putin will not attend the Brics economic summit in Johannesburg next month.
The decision means South Africa will not face the dilemma of whether it should carry out an International Criminal Court arrest warrant against the Russian leader.
South Africa is a signatory to the treaty that created the ICC and would have been obliged under that to arrest Putin, although the country had given strong hints that it was likely it would not have executed the arrest warrant.
But today’s announcement allows South Africa to avoid the problem and comes after Ramaphosa spoke with Putin by telephone in recent days.
The decision for Putin not to attend was by “mutual agreement”, Ramaphosa’s office said. Russia would instead be represented at the 22-24 August summit by foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.
The Brics economic bloc is made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
South Africa had invited the leaders of the other four countries to the summit before Putin’s arrest warrant was issued by the ICC in March.
The announcement brings to an end months of speculation over whether Putin was going to travel to South Africa.
Putin has not travelled to any country that is a signatory to the ICC treaty since he was indicted for war crimes over the abduction of children from Ukraine.
© AFP 2023, with reporting from Press Association
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