Russia said its missile barrage on a<\/p>\n
Ukrainian port central to a landmark grain export deal had destroyed Western-
\nsupplied weapons, after the attack sparked an outcry from Ukraine’s allies.<\/p>\n
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was embarking on a tour of several
\ncountries in Africa and on his first stop in Egypt Sunday sought to reassure
\nCairo that Russian grain supplies would continue.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced Saturday’s strike on the
\nOdessa port as “Russian barbarism” and said it amounted to desperation after
\nthe warring sides struck a deal to release exports from the facility.<\/p>\n
“Even the occupiers admit that we will win. We hear it in their conversations
\n— all the time, in what they tell their loved ones when they contact them,”
\nhe said Sunday in his nightly address.<\/p>\n
Turkey helped broker the accord and said immediately after the double cruise
\nmissile hits that it had received assurances from Moscow that Russian forces
\nwere not responsible.<\/p>\n
But Russia’s defence ministry rolled back on the denial Sunday, saying the
\nstrikes had destroyed a Ukrainian military vessel and arms delivered by
\nWashington.<\/p>\n
“High-precision, long-range missiles launched from the sea destroyed a docked
\nUkrainian warship and a stockpile of anti-ship missiles delivered by the
\nUnited States to the Kyiv regime,” it said.<\/p>\n
“A Ukrainian army repair and upgrade plant has also been put out of order.”<\/p>\n
The strikes have cast a shadow over the milestone accord — that was hammered
\nout over months of negotiations and signed in Istanbul — to relieve a global
\nfood crisis.<\/p>\n
– ‘Order of peace’ –<\/p>\n
United Nations chief Antonio Guterres, who presided over the signing ceremony
\nFriday, “unequivocally” condemned the attack. The United States meanwhile
\nsaid it “casts serious doubt” over Russia’s commitment to the deal.<\/p>\n
Western nations repeated their condemnation of Russia’s military assault on
\nUkraine after the strikes.<\/p>\n
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier called the invasion a war against
\nthe unity of Europe.<\/p>\n
“We must not let ourselves be divided, we must not let the great work of a
\nunited Europe that we have begun so promisingly be destroyed,” he said in a
\nspeech Sunday.<\/p>\n
Cereal prices in Africa — the world’s poorest continent where food supplies
\nare critically tight — surged because of an exports slump.<\/p>\n
Lavrov, who will visit Uganda, Ethiopia and Congo-Brazzaville on the tour,
\ntold his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry that Russia would meet grain
\norders.<\/p>\n
“We confirmed the commitment of Russian exporters of cereal products to meet
\ntheir orders in full,” he said in a press conference.<\/p>\n
Zelensky said the strikes on Odessa showed Moscow could not be trusted to
\nkeep its promises.<\/p>\n
Under the deal brokered by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and
\nGuterres, Odessa is one of three designated export hubs.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian officials said grain was being stored in the port at the time of
\nthe strike, but food stocks did not appear to have been hit.<\/p>\n
There was no response from Moscow until Sunday, but Turkish Defence Minister
\nHulusi Akar said before that Russia had denied carrying out the attack.<\/p>\n
– Kherson ‘liberated’ by September –<\/p>\n
Huge quantities of wheat and other grain have been blocked in Ukrainian ports
\nby Russian warships and the mines Kyiv laid to avert a feared amphibious
\nassault.<\/p>\n
Zelensky has said around 20 million tonnes of produce from last year’s
\nharvest and the current crop would be exported under the agreement,
\nestimating the value of Ukraine’s grain stocks at around $10 billion.<\/p>\n
Diplomats expect grain to only start fully flowing by mid-August.<\/p>\n
The agreement in Istanbul has brought little reprieve on the battlefield
\nwhere Russian forces were carrying out bombardments across the sprawling
\nfront line over the weekend, Ukraine’s presidency said Sunday.<\/p>\n
It said among attacks in the industrial east and south, four Russian cruise
\nmissiles Saturday had hit residential areas in the southern city of Mykolaiv,
\ninjuring five people, including a teenager.<\/p>\n
In a devastated village near Ukraine’s southern front line Stanislav, a 49-
\nyear-old who joined Ukraine’s armed forces after Russia’s invasion, said many
\npeople were afraid.<\/p>\n
“But what can we do, we need to defend our homeland, because if I don’t do it
\nthen my children will be forced to do it,” he said.<\/p>\n
An official in the nearby Kherson region in the south said a Ukrainian
\ncounter-offensive for the territory Russia captured early in the invasion
\nwould be over by September.<\/p>\n
“We can say that a turning point has occurred on the battlefield. We are
\nswitching from defensive to counteroffensive actions,” Sergiy Khlan, an aide
\nto the head of Kherson region, said in an interview with Ukrainian
\ntelevision.BSS\/AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Russia said its missile barrage on a Ukrainian port central to a landmark grain export deal had destroyed Western- supplied weapons, after the attack sparked an outcry from Ukraine’s allies. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was embarking on a tour of several countries in Africa and on his first stop in Egypt Sunday sought to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29069,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-4","category-14"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29068"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29070,"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29068\/revisions\/29070"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}