LAST UPDATE | 2 Aug 2023
RUSSIAN DRONES HAVE damaged infrastructure at a Ukrainian port on the Danube, as Moscow targeted facilities vital for grain shipments from Ukraine following the collapse of a key export arrangement.
Turkey, which along with the United Nations brokered the deal to allow Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea, urged Russia after the port strike not to take steps that would escalate tensions.
Russia struck a grain elevator in the port of Izmail which sits just across the Danube river from Romania, damaging silos, warehouses and administrative buildings, Kyiv said.
Izmail is now the main export route for Ukrainian agricultural products via neighbouring Romania, following Russia’s withdrawal last month from the Black Sea grain agreement.
The deal had allowed around 33 million tonnes of grain to leave Ukrainian ports, easing fears of food shortages.
Russia has been pounding the seaports in the Odesa region that were key for the grain exports granted safe passage under the deal.
“No steps should be taken that will escalate tensions in the Russia-Ukraine war,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in a phone call.
Erdogan emphasised to Putin the significance of a grain deal that he called a “bridge for peace”, the Turkish leader’s office said.
Failure to re-establish the grain deal “will not benefit anyone” and nations in need will suffer the most, Erdogan said.
In the same call, Putin asked Erdogan to aid Russia export its grain to African countries vulnerable to food shortages.
“The mood for cooperation with Turkey and other interested states on this issue was expressed,” the Kremlin said in statement.
With the Black Sea route effectively blocked, the formerly obscure ports of Izmail and Reni on the Danube have become crucial to global food supplies.
But the transit hubs are struggling to process all the arriving grain, causing massive bottlenecks, and have been targeted by Russian strikes.
Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, whose country borders Ukraine along the Danube, said that Russia’s repeated attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure along the river were “unacceptable”.
Last week, Kyiv said it lacked the means to defend itself against strikes on grain infrastructure carried out by Russia, which is blocking “virtually all” Ukrainian ports, according to an army spokeswoman.
Ukraine needed “more air defence”, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, said today on Telegram.
Meanwhile in Kyiv, over 10 Russian drones were downed during an overnight attack that left several floors of a glass high-rise damaged, the city’s military administration said.
“Groups of drones entered Kyiv simultaneously from several directions,” said Sergiy Popko, head of the administration.
Popko said Russia had used a barrage of Iranian-made Shahed drones, with debris hitting several areas.
In the Golosiivsky district, “parts of a drone fell on a playground” and a fire broke out in a non-residential building, he said, adding that emergency services were on the scene.
Kyiv’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko had said earlier that the attack on the capital had damaged several districts, including the busy Solomyansky area.
The attacks come a day after Russia said it downed a wave of Ukrainian drones targeting Moscow and vessels in the Black Sea.
A skyscraper in Moscow’s business district housing government offices was struck for the second time in a few days.
Russia also said today it had launched naval drills on the Baltic Sea, involving some 30 warships, amid rising tensions with European countries over the Ukraine conflict.
During the drills, the navy will practise how to protect sea lanes, transport troops and military cargo, and defend the coastline, the defence ministry said in a statement.
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