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Russian forces launched a massive drone attack on Ukraine’s southern Odesa port region in the early hours of Sunday, a day before the Turkish and Russian presidents were due to hold talks about restarting the export of grain via the Black Sea.
Moscow in July pulled out of the agreement that had allowed Ukraine to ship grain from Black Sea ports, claiming that a parallel deal to remove obstacles from the export of Russian fertiliser and food had not been honoured. The river Danube has since become Ukraine’s main maritime export route for grain.
Sunday’s attack, which lasted for more than three hours, hit grain shipping infrastructure on the Danube, injuring at least two people.
“Russian terrorists continue to attack port infrastructure in the hope that they will be able to provoke a food crisis and hunger in the world,” Andriy Yermak, chief of staff of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, wrote on Telegram.
Ukrainian air defence shot down 22 of the 25 Iranian-made Shaheed drones, Ukraine’s air force said.
Images posted on social media by southern military spokesperson Serhiy Bratchuk showed firefighters dousing flames, but it was unclear whether the location was the Danube port of Reni or nearby Izmail.
“Russia always tries to create a certain information background before important international events,” Bratchuk told Ukrainian television. “But it’s clear that it is impossible to co-operate with Russia.”
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan hopes to persuade his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to renew the grain deal at the talks due to take place on Monday in Sochi.
The original grain deal, brokered by the UN and Turkey in July 2022, had allowed Ukraine to export nearly 33mn tonnes of grains and other commodities from three Ukrainian Black Sea ports.
After Russia refused to renew the deal, Ukraine has steadily increased the amount of grain it exports via the Danube ports, or overland by rail and truck, to about 36mn tonnes.
Kyiv has also tested Russia’s de facto blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea by carving out a “humanitarian” corridor, a route that hugs the Odesa coastline until ships reach the safe waters of Nato members Romania and Bulgaria.
Two commercial vessels transporting metallurgical goods safely completed the trip this weekend, after two grain vessels made the same voyage in mid-August.
“Two more vessels have successfully passed via our temporary Black Sea grain corridor,” Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Ukraine restores true freedom of navigation to the Black Sea . . . We urge our allies to support our effort by providing more air defense systems. Together, we can protect freedom of navigation in the Black Sea and beyond,” he added.
Oleksander Kubrakov, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, said the two latest vessels were operated by a Singaporean shipping company and had been stuck in Ukrainian ports since before February last year, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion.
“There are 56,000 tons of pig iron and 172,000 tons of iron ore concentrate on board,” Kubrakov said in a statement, pointing to the country’s first maritime exports of steel product since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Shipping tracking sites showed that as of Sunday one of the ships had docked outside the Romanian port of Constanța while the other had made it to Istanbul.
Although Ukraine is confident that its onshore defence systems — with a range of more than 100 nautical miles — would deter Russia’s navy from mounting an assault, only one ship has tried the voyage in reverse, sailing from international waters to Ukrainian ports. It was stopped and searched by Russian forces.
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