The vessel waits to be filled at Reni river port on Danube river, in Odesa area, Ukraine, July 21, 2022.
Sergii Kharchenko|Nurphoto|Getty Images
Russian defense ministry authorities on Sunday firmly insisted that an airstrike on the port of Odesa– less than a day after Russia and Ukraine signed a contract on resuming grain deliveries from there– had actually struck just military targets.
“In the seaport in the city of Odesa, on the territory of a shipyard, sea-based high-precision long-range missiles destroyed a docked Ukrainian warship and a warehouse with Harpoon anti-ship missiles supplied by the U.S. to the Kyiv regime,” ministry spokesperson Igor Konashenkov stated at a day-to-day rundown.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated in his nighttime telecasted address Saturday night that the attack on Odesa “destroyed the very possibility” of discussion with Russia.
The Ukrainian armed force stated on Saturday that Moscow had actually assaulted Odesa’s sea port with 4 cruise rockets, 2 of which had actually been shot down by Ukrainian air defense.
Command spokesperson Nataliya Humenyuk stated that no grain storage centers were struck. Turkey’s defense minister, nevertheless, stated he had actually had reports from Ukrainian authorities that a person rocket struck a grain silo while another landed close by, although neither impacted loading at Odesa’s docks.
It was not instantly clear how the airstrike would impact strategies to resume delivering Ukrainian grain by sea in safe passages out of 3 Ukrainian Black Sea ports: Odesa, Chernomorsk and Yuzhny.
Russia and Ukraine on Friday signed similar arrangements with the U.N. and Turkey in Istanbul focused on clearing the method for the delivery of countless lots of frantically required Ukrainian grain, in addition to the export of Russian grain and fertilizer. Senior U.N. authorities voiced hopes that the offer would end a months-long standoff produced by the war in Ukraine that threatened food security around the world.
The arrangement, gotten by The Associated Press, dedicated both Kyiv and Moscow to avoiding strikes on the 3 Black Sea ports.
Elsewhere on Sunday, Ukrainian authorities reported that Russian shelling continued to eliminate and hurt civilians in Ukraine’s south and east.
The guv of the eastern Donetsk area, one of 2 that make up Ukraine’s commercial heartland of the Donbas and an essential focus of Russia’s offensive, stated that 2 civilians had actually been eliminated and 2 more had actually been hurt over the previous 24 hours.
The U.K. military on Sunday early morning reported in its everyday intelligence upgrade that Russia was making “minimal progress” in its continuous Donbas offensive, which it stated stayed small and concentrated on the city of Bakhmut in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk area.
The Ukrainian General Staff validated in its routine upgrade that Russia was “conducting military operations to create conditions” for an attack on Bakhmut, while shooting on surrounding settlements and fighting Ukrainian protectors for control of a close-by thermal plant.
In Ukraine’s south, local authorities stated that a minimum of 5 civilians were injured by Russian shells in the Black Sea port of Mykolaiv on Saturday night and Sunday early morning.
“Also, as a result of the scattering of munitions and their fragments, fires occurred in open areas in the city,” stated Vitaly Kim, guv of the Mykolaiv area.
