Southern Ukraine port cities targeted in Russian missile and drone attacks
CBC
Russia struck Ukraine's port of Odesa with missiles and drones on Tuesday, a day after pulling out of a United Nations-backed deal to let Kyiv export grain, and Ukrainian officials said Moscow was attempting to go back on the offensive in the east.
Russia said it hit fuel storage facilities in Odesa and a plant making seaborne drones there, as part of "mass revenge strikes" in retaliation for attacks by Ukraine that knocked out its road bridge to the occupied Crimean peninsula.
Shortly after the bridge was hit on Monday, Moscow pulled out of the year-old UN-brokered grain export deal, although it denied the two events were linked. The United Nations said the end of the pact risked creating hunger around the world.
Russia's overnight attacks on Ukraine's ports were "further proof that the country-terrorist wants to endanger the lives of 400 million people in various countries that depend on Ukrainian food exports," Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine's presidential staff, said on Telegram.
Ukraine's air force said six Kalibr missiles and 31 out of 36 drones were shot down, mostly over the coastal Odesa and Mykolaiv regions in the south.
Ukraine's southern operational military command said falling debris and blast waves damaged several homes and unspecified port infrastructure in Odesa, with an elderly man injured at his residence. Local authorities in Mykolaiv, another port, described a serious fire there.
Moscow, for its part, said it had foiled a Ukrainian drone strike on Crimea, with no major damage on the ground. It said a single lane of road traffic had reopened on the Crimea bridge.
Ukraine launched a counteroffensive last month and has recaptured some villages in the south and territory around the ruined city of Bakhmut in the east, but has yet to attempt a major breakthrough across heavily defended Russian lines.
Ukrainian commanders said Russian forces were now attempting to return to the offensive north of Bakhmut in Ukraine's Kharkiv region, along a strip of the front line in territory recaptured by Ukraine last year.
The Black Sea grain export deal brokered a year ago by Turkey and the United Nations was one of the only diplomatic successes of the war, lifting a de facto Russian blockade of Ukrainian ports and heading off a global food emergency.
Ukraine and Russia are both among the world's biggest exporters of grain and other foodstuffs. If Ukrainian grain is again blocked from the market, prices could soar around the world, hitting the poorest countries hardest.
Russia says it could return to the grain deal, but only if its demands are met for rules to be eased for its own exports of food and fertilizer. Western countries call that an attempt to use leverage over food supplies to force a weakening in financial sanctions, which already provide exceptions to allow Russia to sell food.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday that the sponsors of the deal, Turkey and the UN, could still help Ukraine maintain a safe sea corridor and inspect vessels.
But the Kremlin warned on Tuesday that attempts to ship grain from Black Sea ports without security guarantees from Russia would carry risks.
