KYIV —
Russia said Sunday that its missile barrage on a Ukrainian port central to a
landmark grain export deal had destroyed Western-supplied weapons, after the
attack sparked an outcry from Ukraine’s allies.
اضافة اعلان
Russian Foreign
Minister
Sergei Lavrov was embarking on a tour of several countries in Africa
and on his first stop in Egypt sought to reassure his counterpart Sameh Shoukry
that Russian grain supplies would continue.
Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced Saturday’s strike on the Odessa port as
“Russian barbarism,” coming just one day after the warring sides struck a deal
to release exports from the facility.
Turkey helped
broker the accord and said immediately after the double cruise missile hits
that it had received assurances from Moscow that Russian forces were not
responsible.
But Russia’s
defense ministry rolled back on the denial Sunday, saying the strikes had
destroyed a Ukrainian military vessel and arms delivered by Washington.
“High-precision,
long-range missiles launched from the sea destroyed a docked Ukrainian warship
and a stockpile of anti-ship missiles delivered by the US to the Kyiv regime,”
it said.
“A Ukrainian army
repair and upgrade plant has also been put out of order.”
The strikes have
cast a shadow over the milestone accord — that was hammered out over months of
negotiations and signed in Istanbul — to relieve a global food crisis.
Russian grain
‘commitment’
Cereal prices in Africa — the world’s poorest continent where food
supplies are critically tight — surged because of an exports slump.
Lavrov, who will
visit
Uganda, Ethiopia, and Congo-Brazzaville on the tour, told Shoukry that
Russia would meet grain orders.
“We confirmed the
commitment of Russian exporters of cereal products to meet their orders in
full,” he said in a press conference.
Zelensky said the
strikes on Odessa showed Moscow could not be trusted to keep its promises and
that dialogue with Moscow was becoming increasingly untenable.
Under the deal
brokered by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and UN chief
Antonio Guterres, Odessa is one of three designated export hubs.
Ukrainian
officials said grain was being stored in the port at the time of the strike,
but food stocks did not appear to have been hit.
Guterres, who
presided over the signing ceremony Friday, “unequivocally” condemned the
attack. The US meanwhile said it “casts serious doubt” over Russia’s commitment
to the deal.
There was no
response from Moscow until Sunday, but Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar
said before that Russia had denied carrying out the attack.
“The Russians told
us that they had absolutely nothing to do with this attack,” he told state news
agency Anadolu.
Odessa officials
said the strikes wounded people without specifying the number or severity of
the injuries.
The first major
accord between the countries since Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine aims
to ease the “acute hunger” the UN says an additional 47 million people are
facing because of the war.
The deal includes
points on running Ukrainian grain ships along safe corridors that avoid known
mines in the Black Sea.
Kherson ‘liberated’
by September
Huge quantities of wheat and other grain have been blocked in Ukrainian
ports by Russian warships and the mines Kyiv laid to avert a feared amphibious
assault.
Zelensky has said
around 20 million tonnes of produce from last year’s harvest and the current
crop would be exported under the agreement, estimating the value of Ukraine’s
grain stocks at around $10 billion.
Diplomats expect
grain to only start fully flowing by mid-August.
The agreement in
Istanbul has brought little reprieve on the battlefield where
Russian forces were carrying out bombardments across the sprawling front line over the
weekend, Ukraine’s presidency said Sunday.
It said among
attacks in the industrial east and south, four Russian cruise missiles Saturday
had hit residential areas in the southern city of Mykolaiv, injuring five
people, including a teenager.
An official in the
nearby Kherson region in the south said a Ukrainian counteroffensive for the
territory captured early in the invasion would be over by September.
“We can say that a turning
point has occurred on the battlefield. We are switching from defensive to
counteroffensive actions,” Sergiy Khlan, an aide to the head of Kherson region,
said in an interview with Ukrainian television.
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