Ukraine on Sunday denounced grain exports that had become “impossible” due to the Russian blockade reinstated by Russia after its exit the day before the agreement allowing their delivery, after an attack on its fleet in Crimea, which Moscow attributed to kyiv with the help of London.
The Russian army assured Sunday that this attack carried out using aerial and marine drones and which hit at least one Russian military vessel in the bay of Sevastopol had in particular used the secure area dedicated to the transport of Ukrainian cereals.
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.
In his daily video address, President Zelensky said on Sunday evening that “Russia is solely responsible for the fact that food will become more expensive in West Africa and East Asia. Russia is the reason why people in Ethiopia, Somalia or Yemen are going to face catastrophic shortages.”
He gave the example of a ship chartered by the UN, with on board 40,000 tons of cereals bound for Ethiopia, ready to leave the port of Chornomorsk and which cannot do so. “Ethiopia is close to famine,” he recalled.
In Istanbul, the Joint Coordination Center (JCC) responsible for overseeing the agreement on the export of Ukrainian grain indicated that the Russian delegation participating in the inspections of vessels carrying Ukrainian grain will withdraw from it “for an indefinite period”.
Two million tonnes blocked
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 therefore decided 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 on Sunday that it was ready to negotiate with kyiv, Ukrainian Foreign Minister 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, fighting and shelling continued on Sunday with at least 10 dead and 13 wounded among civilians in the past 24 hours, according to the report of the presidency.
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 much less now,” observed Viktor Romanov, a 44-year-old worker.
The Russian army has claimed to have 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.