The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has accused Vladimir Putin of trying to trigger a “global catastrophe” and the collapse of global food markets after Russian night strikes against a grain silo and loading facilities at an inland port on the Danube River.
Drone attacks early on Wednesday hit Izmail, Ukraine’s main inland port which is across the Danube from Romania, triggering a spike in global grain prices.
Several buildings in Izmail were destroyed, halting the loading of ships that were being used to sidestep a de facto blockade on Ukrainian food exports Russia imposed in mid-July, when Moscow left a UN-brokered grain export arrangement and started targeting Ukrainian grain storage and export infrastructure.
The Ukrainian government said 40,000 tonnes of grains, which had been destined for countries in Africa as well as China and Israel, had been destroyed.
“For the Russian state, this is not just a battle against our freedom and against our country,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address on Wednesday.
“Moscow is waging a battle for a global catastrophe. In their madness, they need world food markets to collapse, they need a price crisis, they need disruptions in supplies.”
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan urged Putin to reopen talks on the deal the Turkish president brokered last summer to safeguard Ukrainian grain exports through the Black Sea to the world market. The deal expired on 17 July, after Russia’s withdrawal.
After the fresh waves of drone strikes overnight, Erdoğan, in a phone call to the Kremlin, invited Russia’s president to engage in fresh talks over the agreement, with a spokesperson saying the Turkish leader had “expressed the importance of refraining from steps that could escalate tensions during the Russia-Ukraine war, emphasising the significance of the Black Sea initiative, which he described as a bridge of peace”.
In Moscow, Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said the Russian leader needed movement on the barriers to the free export of Russian grain and fertiliser, imposed by the restrictions on payments as part of sanctions against the Kremlin.
He said: “Russia – and president Putin has said this 100 times already – is ready to immediately return to the deal itself … just the deal must be implemented in the part that concerns the Russian Federation.
“So far this has not been done, as you know. The west imposed sanctions against Russia without taking into account the needs of the world community for food. The UN general secretariat is well aware of this.”
The shooting down of 23 Iranian-Shahed drones on Tuesday night, including 10 fired at Ukraine’s capital, highlighted the crucial role of Ukraine’s air defences, in particular the Patriot systems donated by the US, but the gaps elsewhere in the country are becoming clearer.
Russia has offered free grain to African countries while targeting Ukraine’s capacity to store and export foodstuffs since pulling out of the deal brokered by Turkey and the UN to ensure that food and fertiliser from Ukraine, one of the major breadbaskets of the world, could leave its southern ports.
The latest attacks on ports and industrial infrastructure are seemingly designed to kill off the possibility of any future deal with Kyiv on grain supply, and were condemned by the US ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, who said Russia had no empathy for people around the world reliant on Ukrainian products.
She tweeted: “Homes. Ports. Grain silos. Historic buildings. Men. Women. Children. Round-the-clock and intensifying Russian strikes on Kryvyi Rih, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Kherson make it clear once again Russia has no desire for peace, no thought for civilian safety, and no regard for people around the world who rely on food from Ukraine.”
Ukraine’s prosecutor’s office released pictures showing a war crimes investigator outside a ruined building in Izmail, where there was evidence of at least two damaged silos from which wheat could be seen spilling out.
The port, across the river from Romania, a Nato member, has served as the main alternative route out of Ukraine for grain exports since mid-July.
Ukraine’s Danube River ports accounted for about a quarter of grain exports before Russia pulled out of the deal and have since become the main route out.
“The enemy … is trying to destroy Ukrainian grain, attacking industrial and port infrastructure. Unfortunately, there are hits, unfortunately the silo was damaged, and fires broke out at the site,” Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian volunteer army south, part of Ukraine’s armed forces, said in a video statement.
“Russia is trying to cut Ukraine out of the future grain agreement and, most importantly, to strategically displace our country from the global food market.”
Ukraine’s defence ministry said in a statement: “Another elevator in the port of Izmail, Odesa region, was damaged by Russians. Ukrainian grain has the potential to feed millions of people worldwide.”
The state-owned media outlet RIA claimed that Russia’s attacks had struck military targets including an oil terminal, a naval repair yard and a building hosting foreign military forces.
In Kyiv, Sergiy Popko, head of the city military administration, said all the drones targeted at the capital on Tuesday night had been intercepted but that falling debris had damaged some non-residential buildings.
He said: “Groups of drones entered Kyiv simultaneously from several directions. However, all air targets – more than 10 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – were detected and destroyed in time by the forces and means of air defence.”
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said no one had been killed or wounded in the attack but that “parts of a drone fell on the playground” in the Golosiivsky district.
Putin, speaking at a Russia-Africa summit in St Petersburg last week, offered African leaders attending the event the gift of thousands of tonnes of grain.
“We will be ready to provide Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Mali, Somalia, Central African Republic and Eritrea with 25-50,000 tonnes of free grain each in the next three to four months,” Putin told the summit, as participants applauded.
Others in need, such as Sudan and Chad, were not mentioned. Global wheat prices have increased by about 10% in the past two weeks.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has said that a “handful” of donations from the Kremlin will not fix the problem of a dearth of global supply since Russia pulled out of the grain deal.
Meanwhile, a 25-year-old doctor, Dmytro Bilyi, was killed on his first day at Kherson hospital in a strike on the city that injured four other medical workers.
