A view shows a damaged building following a reported drone attack in Moscow, Russia, July 24, 2023. REUTERS/Maxim ShemetovMAXIM SHEMETOV/Reuters
Russia destroyed Ukrainian grain warehouses on the Danube River in a drone attack on Monday, targeting a vital export route for Kyiv in an expanding air campaign that Moscow began last week after quitting the Black Sea grain deal.
Last week’s attacks mostly struck the sea ports of Odesa but Monday’s pre-dawn strikes hit infrastructure along the Danube, an export route whose importance has grown since the demise of the deal allowing Ukrainian grain shipments via the Black Sea.
“The Russian terrorists have again attacked the Odesa region overnight. Port infrastructure on the Danube river is the target this time,” regional governor Oleh Kiper wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Global wheat and corn futures rose sharply on fears that Russian attacks and more fighting, including an overnight drone strike on Moscow, could threaten grain exports and shipping.
Hours after Monday’s attack, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed for Russia to return to the Black Sea grain deal, warning in Rome of a devastating impact on “vulnerable countries struggling to feed their people.”
News website Reni-Odesa cited a local official as saying three grain warehouses had been destroyed in the Danube port city of Reni during the drone attack.
Video footage verified by Reuters showed a man cursing in disbelief at damaged grain warehouses at Reni, an important transport hub across the Danube from NATO and European Union member Romania.
“This recent escalation poses serious risks to the security in the Black Sea,” Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said on Twitter.
Since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has expanded grain exports overland via the EU to about 1 million tons a month, with large volumes being exported from Romanian ports and along the Danube.
“Russia has in the past months not attacked Ukraine’s overland and inland waterways grain infrastructure,” a European trader said. “Any interruption of this traffic could quickly hit international grain supplies.
A French trader called it a “major development and a major blow” to Ukrainian exports, adding: “Without the Black Sea corridor and now with attacks on alternative routes, it will be hard to take Ukrainian grains out of the country.”
Ukrainian officials gave few details. Police said grain warehouses had been hit along with tanks for storing other cargo, causing a fire that Kiper said wounded seven people, one critically.
In photographs of the damage published by police, containers could be seen with the logo of Maersk Group.
“Russia is trying to fully block the export of our grain and make the world starve,” Kiper said.
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba accused Russia of trying to extract concessions “by holding 400 million people hostage” and called for “a united global response to food terrorism.”
Some Ukrainian news outlets reported explosions overnight in the area of Izmail, another Danube port in the Odesa region, but no confirmed reports of damage followed.
Ship-tracking Data showed almost 30 ships had dropped anchor near Izmail. It was not clear what caused them to stop.
Also, Russian authorities accused Ukraine of launching a drone attack on Moscow early Monday that saw one of the aircraft fall near the Defence Ministry’s main headquarters, while the Russian military unleashed new strikes on port infrastructure in southern Ukraine.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said there were no casualties when the drones struck two non-residential buildings in Moscow. Separately, a Ukrainian drone struck an ammunition depot in Russian-annexed Crimea, forcing a halt in traffic on a major highway, Russian authorities said.
In Moscow, Russian media reported that one of the drones fell on the Komsomolsky highway near the capital’s centre, shattering shop windows and damaged the roof of a house just about 200 meters (just over 200 yards) away from the towering riverside Defence Ministry building. The ministry’s main headquarters has Pantsyr air defence systems placed on the roof.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the drone targeted the Defence Ministry’s headquarters, which is located 2.7 kilometres (1.7 miles) away from the Kremlin, or was heading to some other target in central Moscow.
Another drone hit an office building in southern Moscow, gutting several upper floors – more visible damage compared to earlier drone strikes on the Russian capital.
Emergency workers were inspecting the damage and traffic was halted on sections of highways where the drones fell.
Ukrainian authorities didn’t immediately claim responsibility for the strike, which was the second drone attack on the Russian capital this month.
In the previous attack on July 4, the Russian military said four of the five drones were downed by air defences on the outskirts of Moscow and the fifth was jammed by electronic warfare means and forced down. The raid prompted authorities to temporarily restrict flights at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport and divert flights to two other Moscow airports.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted Monday that “the intensity of attempts to attack our regions with drones has grown.”
“So measures are being taken, a very intense daily 24-hour work is underway,” Peskov said, without offering any details about whether Russia’s air defence systems have been enhanced because of the increased attacks.
Russian authorities said that another Ukrainian drone attack early Monday struck an ammunition depot in northern Crimea and forced a halt in traffic on a major highway and a railway crossing the Black Sea peninsula that was illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014. Railway traffic was restored several hours later.
The Moscow-appointed head of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, said that authorities also ordered the evacuation of several villages within a five-kilometer (three-mile) radius of the depot that was hit.
Aksyonov said the military shot down or jammed 11 attacking drones, while the Defence Ministry claimed later that 11 of the 17 attacking drones were jammed and crashed into the Black Sea and another three were shot down.
Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s digital transformation minister, noted on his messaging app channel that Monday’s drone attacks on Moscow and Crimea signalled that Russia’s electronic warfare means and air defences are “less and less able to protect the skies of the invaders,” adding that “there will be more of it.”
Ukrainska Pravda reported that the drone attack on Moscow was a special operation by Ukrainian military intelligence.
– with files from The Associated Press
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