The Russian invasion of Ukraine entered its sixth month on Sunday, the day after strikes on the port of Odessa which threaten the application of the agreement on the resumption of grain exports blocked by the war.
Moscow assured Sunday having destroyed the day before in this port, vital for the trade of Ukrainian cereals, a warship as well as missiles supplied by the United States.
“High-precision, long-range missiles fired from the sea destroyed a docked Ukrainian military ship and a stockpile of Harpoon anti-ship missiles delivered by the United States to the kyiv regime,” the Russian Defense Ministry said.
“A Ukrainian army ship repair and modernization plant has also been put out of use,” he said in a statement.
Earlier, the spokeswoman for Russian diplomacy, Maria Zakharova, had claimed that a Ukrainian “military star” had been destroyed in this attack.
“Kalibr missiles destroyed military infrastructure in the port of Odessa with a high-precision strike,” she said.
AFP was unable to independently confirm the Russian statements.
After the shootings in Odessa, Ukraine accused Vladimir Putin of having “spit in the face” of the UN and Turkey and of compromising the implementation of the agreement signed on Friday in Istanbul to again allow transport in the Black Sea cereals immobilized by the conflict.
On Saturday, Russia had however denied to Ankara having been involved in this bombardment.
The invasion of Ukraine by Russia – two countries which notably provide 30% of world wheat exports – led to a surge in cereal and oil prices, which hit the African continent in particular hard.
No respite on the front
The war in Ukraine knows no respite on the fronts of Mykolaiv (south), in the Kharkiv region (north-east), the second largest city of this country, in that of Kherson (south) and in the two territories pro-Russian separatists from Donetsk and Lugansk in the east, according to the Ukrainian presidency.
“Mykolaiv was bombarded again” on Sunday morning after being targeted the previous evening by “four Kalibr-type cruise missiles”, which injured five people including a teenager and damaged several buildings, she added.
She also reported shelling in the Kharkiv region, where “several residential buildings were damaged and residential buildings burned down”.
In the Kherson region, largely occupied by Russian troops, the Ukrainians claim to be stepping up their counterattack.
“We can talk about a turnaround on the ground. During recent operations, it was the Ukrainian armed forces that had the advantage,” the adviser to the head of the regional military administration loyal to kyiv, Sergiy Khlan, assured on Sunday.
“Our army is advancing frankly, we are moving from a defensive phase to a counter-offensive,” he added, promising that the region “will be definitively liberated by September and that all the plans of the occupiers will fail”.
The Russians captured Kherson on March 3, the first major Ukrainian city to fall into their hands since the launch of their offensive on February 24.
In this context, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on his compatriots on Sunday evening to “be united and work together for victory”, before “celebrating for the first time Ukraine Sovereignty Day, July 28”. .
“War against the unity of Europe”
His German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, for his part considered that the Russian war in Ukraine was also “a war against the unity of Europe”.
“We must not allow ourselves to be divided, we must not allow the great work of a united Europe that we have started so promising to be destroyed,” he said.
North Korea, which has just officially recognized the two self-proclaimed pro-Russian separatist regions in eastern Ukraine, has for its part accused the Americans of manufacturing biological weapons in Ukraine, echoing an accusation already made by Moscow and rejected by the UN in March.
The United States has “installed numerous biological laboratories in dozens of countries and regions, including Ukraine, in defiance of international treaties”, wrote the official North Korean news agency KCNA, referring to elements “detected” by Russia.
Washington and kyiv deny for their part the existence of installations intended to produce biological weapons in Ukraine.