KYIV: Russian drones hit Danube river port infrastructure that is critical to Ukraine’s grain exports, injuring at least two people in the attack on southern parts of the Odesa region on Sunday, Ukrainian officials said. The attack took place the day before Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan are due to hold talks in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi on the grain deal.
The Danube has become Ukraine’s main route for exporting grain since July when Russia quit a UN and Turkey-brokered deal that had given safe passage to Kyiv’s exports of grain, oilseed and vegetable oils via the Black Sea. Turkey has been pressing to revive the grain deal.
Ukraine’s South Military Command said on social media that at least two civilians were injured in the early morning attack on what it called “civil infrastructure of the Danube”.
The Ukrainian Air Force said its air defence systems shot down 22 of the 25 Iranian-made Shahed drones launched by Russia.
Officials did not give details of which port facility was hit but some Ukrainian media reported blasts in the Reni port, which along with Izmail is one of Ukraine’s two major ports on the Danube. The military said a fire that resulted from the attack at the facility was quickly extinguished.
The Russian Defence Ministry was quoted by Interfax as saying that a group of Russian drones successfully struck fuel depots at the Reni port used by the Ukrainian military. Reni and Izmail have been repeatedly attacked by Russian drones in recent weeks.
“Russian terrorists continue to attack port infrastructure in the hope of provoking a food crisis and famine in the world,” the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak wrote on Telegram.
Artillery fire hit eight settlements across the region, Ukraine’s National Police wrote on Telegram.
Ukrainian prosecutors also announced Sunday that they had opened a war crimes investigation into the death of a police officer killed by Russian shelling on the town of Seredyna-Buda on Saturday afternoon.
Two other police officers and one civilian were wounded during the attack, which hit Ukraine’s Sumy region.
The Black Sea grain deal, reached in July 2022, aimed to alleviate a global food crisis. Ukraine is a major producer of grains and oilseeds and the interruption to its exports after the outbreak of war in February last year pushed global food prices to record highs.
Russia has complained that under the deal its own food and fertiliser exports faced obstacles and that not enough Ukrainian grain was going to countries in need.