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Russia has stepped up its assaults on Black Sea port infrastructure and civilian shipping in recent days, in what Ukraine says is an attempt to disrupt its exports and damage its economy.
The attacks are part of an intensifying campaign of strikes on the city of Odesa and the region along Ukraine’s southern coast. Since last Monday, Russia has carried out five attacks in the area, killing 14 civilians and injuring 28, the U.N.’s Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine reported on Friday, citing local authorities.
The latest strike came in the early hours of Friday, when ballistic missiles targeted the region. One of them hit a two-story residential building, killing four people, including a teenage girl, emergency services said. Another nine people were hospitalized.
The strikes on ships were mostly aimed at those flying flags of small countries unlikely to retaliate against Russia. Last Monday, a container ship under the flag of Palau was hit, Ukrainian official said. The day before that, a missile damaged a vessel under a Saint Kitts and Nevis flag, according to the regional military administration.
The recent strikes on commercial ships have prompted Peter Stano, the European Commission’s main external affairs spokesman, to accuse Russia of continuing to weaponize food shipments from Ukraine. “Russia is directly targeting the supply of food to the people most in need,” he said at a news briefing on Thursday. “All these acts are blatant violations of international law and must stop immediately.”
Overall, since the start of the invasion in February 2022, nearly 300 port facilities in and near Odesa have been destroyed or damaged, according to Oleksiy Kuleba, the deputy prime minister for reconstruction of Ukraine.
“The targets of enemy shelling are primarily ports, civilian vessels and granaries,” he wrote on Telegram. Over the past three months, almost 60 attacks were carried out, damaging 177 vehicles and 22 civilian vessels, he wrote. In addition, he said 79 civilians were injured, including port workers, employees of logistics companies and ship crew members.
The Ukrainian government says these strikes are aimed at reducing Ukraine’s export potential, which for grain takes place mostly by sea. This primarily affects developing countries and Europe, Mr. Kuleba said. Overall, about 40 countries receive Ukrainian grain, including in Africa, China and the Middle East, as well as in Europe.
In the early months of the war, Ukrainian shipping was effectively shut down after a series of Russian strikes on ships carrying grain. But in July 2022, Ukraine and Russia, with help from Turkey, negotiated a maritime corridor to export Ukrainian crops. The corridor allowed Ukraine to export 46 million tons of agricultural products, officials said, before Russia declined to renew the agreement a year later.
Since then, Ukraine has pushed Russia’s Black Sea Fleet away from the coastline with sea drones and exploding remote-controlled speedboats. Military analysts cite it as one of Ukraine’s most striking successes of the war.
With Russia’s fleet pushed back, Ukraine decided to reopen the ports without Russian security guarantees, with ships hugging the coast on their way to the Bosporus. Ukraine has not targeted civilian shipping at Russian ports.
Exports via the Black Sea crept back up, almost to prewar levels, as Russia did not at first try to strike the vessels. In recent weeks, that has changed.
Ukrainian farmers and exporters are worried that Russia is again trying to prevent it from exporting grain. “For Ukraine, the agriculture sector is a key source of budget revenue,” said Denys Marchuk, the deputy head of the Ukrainian Agrarian Council, a nongovernmental agency.
Reducing Ukraine’s grain exports would be both a blow to Kyiv and a boost to Russia, he said. “If Ukraine will be knocked out of this process and its crops will not enter the market,” Mr. Marchuk said, “the price will rise and Russia will be able to have good deals selling its crops, which will help to fill up its budget to produce weapons and feed its army.”
Highlighting the risk to global grain markets is yet another task for Ukraine’s diplomacy as it works to persuade partners to provide more military aid to combat the Russian invasion.
Since the postponement of a meeting on military aid to Ukraine that was scheduled for Saturday at the Ramstein U.S. air base in Germany, President Volodymyr Zelensky set off on a tour around Europe, meeting with leaders in Britain, France, Italy and Germany, as well as with Pope Francis.
Anastasia Kuznietsova contributed reporting.
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