The Russian army assured Sunday that this attack carried out using air and sea drones and which hit at least one Russian military ship in the Bay of Sevastopol had in particular used the secure area dedicated to the transport of Ukrainian cereals. She assured to have recovered the debris of machines and to have analyzed them.
According to Moscow, one of the drones used in this attack could have been launched “from one of the civilian ships chartered by kyiv or its Western masters for the export of agricultural products from the seaports of Ukraine”.
kyiv on Saturday denounced a “false pretext” and called on the international community to put pressure on Moscow to “respect its obligations again”. London denied any responsibility for the attack in Crimea and Washington and the EU condemned the Russian withdrawal from this essential agreement for the world food supply, concluded in July under the aegis of the UN and Turkey.
On Sunday, Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov assured that a ship loaded with 40 tons of grain should have left Ukraine on Sunday for Ethiopia, “but because of the blockade of the grain corridor by Russia, exports are impossible”.
Turkey, another guarantor of the agreement, assured for its part that the inspections of cargo ships already loaded with grain and waiting in Istanbul would continue on Sunday and Monday, but “that no ship will leave Ukraine”.
– Two million tonnes blocked –
According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, it is in fact at least 176 ships carrying more than two million tons of grain loaded in Ukraine that are blocked by Moscow.
“Russia began to aggravate the global food shortage in September, when it began to block the movements of ships carrying our agricultural products,” he said on Saturday evening.
The Joint Coordination Center (JCC) responsible for overseeing this agreement confirmed that no cargo movement had been validated for the day on Sunday.
The grain agreement had made it possible to release millions of tonnes of agricultural products stuck for months in Ukrainian ports due to the Russian invasion. In recent weeks, Russia had multiplied the criticisms of the text, stressing that its own exports suffered as a result of the sanctions.
Moscow assured that it was ready to replace Ukrainian exports with its own for poor countries and offered to give them 500,000 tonnes of grain free of charge in the coming months.
US President Joe Biden called the Russian decision “scandalous”. “There was no reason for them to do this,” he said.
The EU urged Russia to “reverse its decision”, which “endangers the main export route for cereals and fertilizers which are needed to respond to the world food crisis caused by the war”.
The UN, guarantor of the agreement, called for it to be preserved. The organisation’s secretary general, Antonio Guterres, said he was “deeply concerned” on Sunday.
He is engaged in “intense consultations” so that Russia reconsiders its decision to suspend the agreement and has decided, as a result, to postpone for one day his departure in order to participate in the Arab League summit in Algiers on Tuesday, according to a press release.
– “To divert attention” –
If the Kremlin repeated Sunday to be ready to negotiate with kyiv, the Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kouleba denounced a “smokescreen”. “The behavior of the Russians is so predictable: if they commit a crime in the evening, expect them to offer talks in the morning,” he wrote on Twitter.
On the front in Ukraine, fighting and shelling continued on Sunday with at least 10 civilians dead and 13 injured in the past 24 hours, according to the presidency’s report.
In the Kherson region, in the south of the country, where the next major battle between Russian and Ukrainian forces is expected, AFP journalists observed sporadic artillery duels in the village of Kotliarevé, without provoking excitement among the locals.
“They are shooting at us a lot less now,” observed Viktor Romanov, a 44-year-old worker.
The Russian army said it carried out a strike on a Ukrainian special services training center in Otchakiv, in the Mykolaiv region, in the south. Moscow assured Saturday that it was in Ochakiv that the attack on its fleet in Crimea had been prepared with the help of British experts.
London denied the allegations, citing a “made up story” by Russia to “distract attention” from its setbacks in Ukraine, where Russian troops have lost thousands of square miles since September.
