War in Ukraine: Russia fires missiles over the Black Sea, which returns to the center of the conflict zone

Moscow also again bombarded Odessa and other crucial ports for the export of Ukrainian grain, after suspending a key deal.

Russia announced this Friday that it carried out military exercises with missile fire in the Black Sea, the scene of growing tensions with Ukraine and its allies after the suspension of a crucial grain export agreement for world food.

Moscow forces also shelled the port of Odessa, in southern Ukraine and on the shores of the Black Sea, for the fourth night in a row, hitting grain silos, authorities reported.

After ending a deal on Monday facilitating the export of grain from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, Russia has launched attacks on grain warehouses and crucial infrastructure in the region’s ports, most notably Odessa and Mykolaiv.

“The Russians attacked Odessa with Kalibr cruise missiles from the Black Sea,” denounced the regional governor, Oleg Kiper.

According to him, the Moscow forces “destroyed 100 tons of peas and 20 tons of barley,” in addition to injuring two people.

The United Nations Secretary General, António Guterres, warned that these attacks are having a “negative effect on world prices for wheat and maize, which hurts everyone, but especially vulnerable people in the global south.”

A grain warehouse for export, in the Ukrainian port of Odessa, attacked by Russian forces on Friday. Photo: EFE

Missiles in the Black Sea

For its part, the Russian Ministry of Defense indicated that the Black Sea Fleet “carried out live firing of anti-ship cruise missiles against a ship used as a target at the combat training range in the northwestern part of the Black Sea.”

“The ship used as a target was destroyed as a result of a missile impact,” he said.

Army ships and planes trained “actions to isolate the area temporarily closed to navigation and also carried out a series of measures to stop the attacking ship,” it added.

In addition, the Russian and Chinese naval forces conducted joint exercises in the Sea of ​​Japan.

On Wednesday, the Kremlin warned that it would consider cargo ships bound for Ukraine as possible military targets. He also announced that he was closing traffic in parts of the northwest and southeast of this sea that bathes both countries at war.

In a similar message, Ukraine announced that it was banning navigation in “the northeastern part of the Black Sea and in the Kerch Strait” near the Crimean peninsula.

After the end of the agreement, kyiv said it was prepared to continue exporting grain by sea and called on the UN and neighboring countries to establish a safe corridor for navigation.

An image released by the Russian Defense Ministry shows a warship in the Black Sea on Friday. Photo: REUTERS

cluster bombs

Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces began using US-supplied cluster bombs to try to speed up a slow counteroffensive launched by kyiv a month ago, the White House said.

The United States recently delivered the controversial weapons to kyiv for the first time, which disperse hundreds of small explosives and are banned in several countries because of the threat they pose to civilians.

Ukrainian troops began using them “in the past week or so,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Thursday.

“They are using them properly, they are using them effectively and they are having an impact on Russia’s defensive formations and maneuvers,” he said.

Fire and destruction after a Russian attack on the Ukrainian city of Mikolaiv, this Thursday. Photo: AP

Stopping the Ukrainian counteroffensive

Since June, kyiv has been trying to recapture large parts of territory in southern and eastern Ukraine still occupied by Russia, but the counteroffensive seems to have stalled on large sections of the front.

A senior advisor to the Ukrainian presidency acknowledged to AFP that this operation will be “long and difficult.”

For his part, President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that the Ukrainian counteroffensive had so far not yielded “any results” and that the “colossal resources” of weapons supplied to Ukraine by its Western allies were not having an effect on the front.

Putin further warned that Moscow will use “all means” at its disposal to protect Belarus, its ally, from possible attacks. “An aggression against Belarus will be equivalent to an aggression against the Russian Federation,” he said during a meeting of his Security Council, broadcast on television.

Fuente: AFP

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