KIEV, Ukraine – Russian Defense Ministry officials insisted on Sunday that the airstrike on the Odessa port only hit military installations, even a day after Russia and Ukraine signed an agreement to restart grain supplies.
“In the shipyard area of the Odessa port city port, high-precision sea-based long-range missiles destroyed a parked Ukrainian ship and a warehouse with Harpoon anti-aircraft missiles supplied by the United States to the Kiev regime. This was announced by the spokesman of the ministry Igor Konashenkov during the daily briefing.
This was announced by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a televised speech every Saturday evening. The attack on Odessa eliminated the possibility of dialogue with Russia.
The Ukrainian army said on Saturday that it had attacked the Moscow port of Odessa with four cruise missiles, two of which were shot down by Ukrainian air defenses.
Command spokeswoman Natalya Humenyuk said the grain storage facilities were not damaged. But the Turkish defense minister said he had received reports from Ukrainian authorities that one missile had hit a grain silo and the other had landed nearby, but neither had hit the cargoes at the Odessa pier.
It is not yet known what effect the airstrike will have on plans to continue shipping Ukrainian grain from the three Ukrainian Black Sea ports to protect corridors from Odessa, Chernomorsk and Yuzhny.
Russia and Ukraine signed the same agreements with the United Nations and Turkey in Istanbul on Friday, aiming to pave the way for Russian exports of grain and fertilizers, along with millions of tons of desperately needed Ukrainian grain. Senior UN officials have expressed hope that the deal will end the month-long stalemate caused by the war in Ukraine, which threatens food security around the world.
The deal, obtained by the Associated Press, urges both Kiev and Moscow to refrain from attacking the three Black Sea ports.
Elsewhere on Sunday, Ukrainian officials said Russian bombing continued to kill and injure civilians in southern and eastern Ukraine.
The governor of eastern Donetsk, which makes up Ukraine’s Donbass industrial zone and is a major focus of Russia’s attacks, said two civilians were killed and two more injured in the past 24 hours.
The British military said in its daily intelligence briefing on Sunday morning that Russia made “minimal progress” in its ongoing offensive in Donbas, which it said was small-scale and focused on the city of Bakhmut in the region. Donetsk of eastern Ukraine.
In its regular update, the Ukrainian General Staff confirmed that Russia was “conducting military operations to create the conditions for an attack on Bakhmut, while shooting surrounding settlements and fighting Ukrainian defenders for control of a nearby thermoelectric power plant.”
In southern Ukraine, regional officials said at least five civilians were injured by Russian artillery fire in the Black Sea port of Mykolaiv between Saturday night and Sunday morning.
“In addition, fires have broken out in the open areas of the city due to the dispersion of ammunition and its fragments,” said Vitaly Kim, governor of the Mykolaiv region.
– A Washington-based think tank said Ukrainian forces are likely preparing or launching a counterattack in the Kherson area.
The Institute for War Studies said Serhii Khlan, an adviser to the Kherson Oblast administration, said Ukrainian forces have captured unspecified settlements in the region, but urged Ukrainian civilians to remain silent on the counterattack in course until the Ukrainian authorities issued an official statement. Declaration.
ISW says open source information on any progress made by Ukrainian troops “is likely to be limited and delayed.”
– Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Cairo for talks with Egyptian officials as he tries to break Western diplomatic isolation and sanctions over his country’s invasion of Ukraine.
Lavrov landed in Cairo at the end of Saturday, the first leg of his trip to Africa, which will include stops in Ethiopia, Uganda and Congo, according to the Russian state television network.
Source: Washington Post
John Cameron is a journalist at The Nation View specializing in world news and current events, particularly in international politics and diplomacy. With expertise in international relations, he covers a range of topics including conflicts, politics and economic trends.
