Russia attacks Ukraine’s Danube port, driving up world grain prices

KYIV, Aug 2 (Reuters) – Russia attacked Ukraine’s grain ports early on Wednesday, including an inland port across the Danube river from Romania, sending global food prices soaring as Moscow ramps up its use of the force to re-impose a blockade on Ukraine. exports

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said a grain silo was damaged in the Danube port of Izmail in the Odessa region: “Ukrainian grain has the potential to feed millions of people around the world,” the Ukrainian defense ministry wrote. ministry on the X messaging platform, formerly known as Twitter.

There were no reports of casualties, Odessa Region Governor Oleh Kiper wrote in a post on the Telegram messaging app. Kiper posted several photos showing firefighting crews trying to put out a fire in a dilapidated high-rise building next to a river.

“Unfortunately, there is damage,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Telegram.

“The most significant ones are in the south of the country. Russian terrorists have once again attacked ports, grain and world food security.”

An industry source also confirmed that Izmail was the main target of the attack, describing the level of damage as “severe”.

Ukraine’s prosecutor’s office released footage showing a war crimes investigator outside a dilapidated building and at least two damaged silos with falling wheat.

The port, across the river from NATO member Romania, has served as Ukraine’s main alternate exit route for grain exports since Russia reimposed its de facto blockade of Ukrainian Black Sea ports. in mid-July.

Chicago wheat prices rose 4% after Wednesday’s attack, as traders again worried about a hit to global supplies by taking Ukraine, one of the world’s top food exporters, out of the market.

Russia has relentlessly attacked Ukraine’s agricultural and port infrastructure for more than two weeks, ever since it refused to extend a deal that lifted the wartime blockade of Ukrainian ports last year. Moscow has demanded better conditions for its own food and fertilizer exports, which are already exempt from international financial sanctions.

“The enemy… is trying to destroy the Ukrainian grain, attacking the industrial and port infrastructure. Unfortunately, there are hits, unfortunately the silo was damaged and fires broke out at the site,” said Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Volunteer Army. South Ukraine. , part of the Ukrainian armed forces, said in a video statement.

“Russia is trying to exclude Ukraine from the future grain deal and, most importantly, to strategically displace our country from the world food market,” he said.

Ukraine’s Danube river ports accounted for about a quarter of grain exports before Russia withdrew from the Black Sea deal and have become the main outbound route ever since, with grain loaded onto barges and shipped to the Romanian port of Constanta on the Black Sea for onward shipment.

On Sunday, Ukrainian media reported that several foreign cargo ships had reached Izmail directly from the Black Sea, for the first time since the grain deal expired, potentially opening a gap in Russia’s recently reinstated blockade.

The United Nations has warned of a possible food crisis and famine in the world’s poorest countries as a result of Russia’s decision to leave the deal, mediated by the UN and Turkey.

Moscow says it will treat ships headed for Ukraine’s seaports as potential military targets. kyiv has said it expects the ships to return anyway, but so far they haven’t.

As a result of the deal’s collapse in mid-July, Ukraine’s grain exports for the month fell 40% from June, analysts said on Tuesday.

Russian drones have already attacked Izmail once before in late July, destroying grain warehouses.

Ukrainian officials have said that Moscow has attacked 26 port facilities, five civilian vessels and 180,000 tons of grain in nine days of strikes since it left the grain deal. Moscow has said such attacks are retribution for a Ukrainian attack on a bridge Russia uses to supply its occupying army in southern Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russia also launched a drone strike on kyiv and the surrounding region overnight. Air defense shot down 23 drones, but debris from the downed drones damaged several buildings in the capital and the region.

No casualties have been reported so far.

Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Edited by Jacqueline Wong, Tom Hogue, Simon Cameron-Moore, Peter Graff

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