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Russia Strikes Odessa Port After Signing Deal to Unblock Ukrainian Grain Exports

KYIV, Ukraine—Russia launched a missile attack on Ukraine’s key grain-exporting port of Odessa, officials said, hours after signing an international agreement to ease its blockade of the Black Sea coastline and allow for the safe transport of grain and other foodstuffs necessary to alleviate a looming global food crisis.

The attack on Odessa appeared to violate the terms of the United Nations-brokered agreement signed by Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul on Friday, which stipulated that both countries would refrain from attacking port facilities or civilian ships used for grain transport, according to a copy of the agreement reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. U.N. Secretary-General

António Guterres

condemned the strike, saying in a statement that all parties had committed to ensuring the safe movement of Ukrainian grain shipments.

At least two Russian Kalibr cruise missiles hit Odessa, the only major Ukrainian port resisting Russian occupation, damaging infrastructure at the site, Ukraine officials said. Another two of the missiles, which Russia has been launching from warships and submarines, were shot down by aerial defenses, officials said.

A railcar discharging point and a warehouse used for loading grain were destroyed in the attack, according to international grain traders.

The target of the strike was likely a nearby shipbuilding yard, workers at the port said.

“It’s obvious that the agreement with Russia is not even worth the paper it was signed on…Russia is a terrorist state,” said Ukraine’s ambassador to Turkey,

Vasyl Bodnar,

who was present at the signing of the agreement.

Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman

Oleg Nikolenko

said the attack on Odessa was like spitting in the face of the U.N. and Turkey, which facilitated and hosted the negotiations.

“We urge the U.N. and Turkey to ensure Russia’s compliance with its obligations to provide a safe corridor for the grain exports,” Mr. Nikolenko said in a statement posted to Facebook.

A resident of Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine, on Saturday carried items out of an apartment damaged by a Russian attack.



Photo:

STRINGER/REUTERS

Russia’s Defense Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment, nor was there any comment from the Kremlin.

Turkish officials who helped broker the agreement said they had been in contact with Russia, which denied being behind the attack.

“The Russians told us that they had absolutely nothing to do with this attack and that they were examining the issue very closely and in detail. The fact that such an incident occurred right after the agreement we made yesterday regarding the grain shipment really worried us as well,” said Turkey’s Defense Minister

Hulusi Akar

in a statement on Saturday.

Mr. Akar signed the agreements with Ukraine and Russia on behalf of Turkey on Friday. He added that Ankara would continue to fulfill its duties under the grain agreement, which calls on Turkey to help monitor the accord and inspect shipments.

Russia also struck a military airport and a railway station on Saturday in central Ukraine, authorities said, in another long-range attack reaching far beyond the immediate front lines. Ukraine, meanwhile, is continuing to take advantage of Western weapons to stall Russia’s military advance.

Andriy Raikovych,

head of the Kirovohrad region in central Ukraine, said 13 missiles were fired at infrastructure and military facilities overnight, leaving at least three people dead and 13 wounded. Another strike, on Mykolaiv in the south, destroyed a warehouse, authorities there said.

Odessa, the only key port city on the Black Sea still held by Ukraine, was also shelled Saturday, with local media reporting seven missile strikes inside the urban area.

Ukraine’s forces meanwhile used U.S.-made Himar rocket launchers in a systematic shelling campaign seemingly aimed at cutting off vital supplies from the strategically important southern region of Kherson, which Russia has occupied since early in the invasion, Russian and Ukrainian officials said.

Kyiv’s use of Himars launchers to bombard two strategic bridges over the Dnipro and Inhulets rivers has already made tank and truck traffic between Kherson and Russia near-impossible, according to officials and footage from the ground circulating on social media. Ukrainian officials have said that they are preparing a counteroffensive to liberate the Kherson region.

Residents of cities throughout Ukraine have largely become accustomed to the sound of air-raid sirens portending a possible rocket attack, with the majority disregarding advice to find the nearest underground shelter and wait until the danger has passed. Mr. Raikovych asked them to reconsider.

“I continually urge you to not ignore the sirens and immediately go to a shelter,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

The latest round of attacks beyond the front lines comes as Ukrainian forces slow the Russian campaign to take the Donbas region in the east. Ukraine’s strikes on arms depots and strategic bridges in Russian-occupied territory, and its effective use of Himars rocket systems and other Western-supplied arms, have made it much harder for Russia to solidify its occupation in certain regions and to maintain the relentless artillery barrages that have underpinned its piecemeal but steady advance since April.

Analysts say a brief operational pause earlier this month following Russia’s capture of the eastern Luhansk region has given its troops too little time to recover before their campaign resumed this week.

Part of a rocket protrudes from a wheat field in the Kharkiv region.



Photo:

sergey bobok/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

“Russian forces are degraded, they are beat up, tired and exhausted, and they need to regroup in order to be able to regain some of the combat effectiveness which they’d lost over the course of the Donbas campaign and the overall war,” said George Barros, an analyst at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War. “An approximately 10-day operational pause is not sufficiently long for the Russian forces to be able to regain the strength that they need.”

While the battlefield picture has ossified in recent days, diplomatic avenues to resolve the crisis have made some headway. In the agreement aimed at ending the grain crisis caused by the war, Ukraine and Russia paved the way for the resumption of exports from Black Sea ports blocked by Russian ships. Delegates from the two countries signed parallel deals Friday at a ceremony in Istanbul, following months of diplomacy led by Turkey and the United Nations.

The agreement could free up about 18 million tons of wheat, corn and other supplies that have been stuck at Ukrainian ports and grain silos for weeks. Grain analysts have said they expect it could take weeks for grain shipments to begin flowing again, if both sides remain committed to the deal.

Late on Friday, Ukraine said operations at some of its ports may resume in as little as three days. Yury Vaskov, Ukraine’s deputy infrastructure minister and a member of the country’s delegation at the talks in Istanbul, told Ukrainian media on Friday that the port of Chornomorsk south of Odessa is preparing to handle the first vessel carrying grain.

River traffic on Thursday near the port of Reni, on the Ukrainian stretch of the Danube.



Photo:

Sergii Kharchenko/Zuma Press

The most active wheat futures contract fell 5.9%, to $7.59 per bushel, in trading on the Chicago Board of Trade Friday, as the deal raised hopes that a restart to Ukrainian grain exports would ease a brewing global food-supply crisis.

The deal has been seen as a limited but promising step toward bringing the two sides closer to a peace deal. Some European Union countries have suggested Ukraine should make concessions to Russia in exchange for peace. But in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Friday, Ukrainian President

Volodymyr Zelensky

said any pause in the fighting could merely give battered Russian forces a chance to regroup and rearm.

Instead he called for further weapons supplies from the West, and credited the support of Ukraine’s allies for shifting the balance on the battlefield and allowing Ukraine to bog down Russian troops fighting to capture swaths of the country’s east. Shortly after he spoke, the White House on Friday announced another $270 million worth of weapons for Ukraine, including four more Himars and hundreds more Phoenix Ghost drones.

The U.S. also said that the Pentagon is considering providing Ukrainian forces with jet fighters. It is “making some preliminary explorations into the feasibility of potentially providing fighter aircraft to the Ukrainians,” said John Kirby, the National Security Council coordinator for strategic communication. U.S. officials have previously resisted supplying Ukraine with jet fighters over concerns that they could risk a more direct conflict with Moscow.

Write to Matthew Luxmoore at Matthew.Luxmoore@wsj.com, Bojan Pancevski at bojan.pancevski@wsj.com and Jared Malsin at jared.malsin@wsj.com

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West seeks to unblock Ukraine’s grain ports as Russia digs in

  • U.S. urges Russia to unblock grain exports
  • Putin warns of ‘catastrophic’ energy price spikes
  • Artillery barrages pepper Donbas
  • Russia suggests ready for long war
  • Ukraine urges West to send more high-precision weapons

KYIV, July 8 (Reuters) – Ukraine’s allies on Friday urged Russia to allow Kyiv to ship blockaded grain out to an increasingly hungry world, as a belligerent Moscow warned Western nations against attempts to enact reprisals over an invasion now well into its fifth month.

Signalling that the Kremlin was in no mood for compromise, President Vladimir Putin said continued use of sanctions against Russia risked causing “catastrophic” energy price rises, and his top diplomat clashed with his Western counterparts at a G20 meeting. read more

As Ukraine called on allies to step up deliveries of high-precision weapons to slow Russia’s advance, Moscow’s envoy to London offered little prospect of a pull-back from parts of Ukraine under Russian control.

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Ambassador Andrei Kelin told Reuters that Russian troops would capture the rest of the eastern Donbas region and were unlikely to withdraw from land across the southern coast.

Ukraine would eventually have to strike a peace deal or “continue slipping down this hill” to ruin, he said. read more

On the Donbas frontlines, Ukrainian officials reported Russian shelling of towns and villages ahead of an anticipated push for more territory. read more

‘SCORCHED EARTH TACTICS’

On Thursday, Putin had indicated that current prospects of finding a solution to the conflict were dim, saying Russia’s campaign in Ukraine had barely got started.

Ambassador Kelin’s remarks gave an insight into Russia’s potential endgame – a forced partition that would leave its former Soviet neighbour shorn of more than a fifth of its post-Soviet territory.

“We are going to liberate all of the Donbas,” Kelin said.

“Of course it is difficult to predict the withdrawal of our forces from the southern part of Ukraine because we have already experience that after withdrawal, provocations start.”

An escalation of the war was possible, he added.

Ukrainian officials said they needed more high-grade Western weapons to shore up the their defences.

Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the National Security and Defence Council, said Ukraine still did not have enough Western weapons and soldiers needed time to adapt to using them.

Kyiv has attributed battlefield successes to last month’s arrival of U.S.-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS).

“When they came in, the Russian war machine could instantly feel its effect,” Danilov told Reuters. But receiving more Western military aid was vital. read more

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s chief of staff also urged the West to send more heavy weapons to counter what he called Russia’s “scorched earth tactics”.

“With a sufficient number of howitzers, SPG and HIMARS, our soldiers are able to stop and drive the invaders from our land,” Andriy Yermak wrote on Twitter.

‘NOT YOUR COUNTRY’

At the meeting of G20 foreign ministers in Bali, Indonesia, some of the staunchest critics of the invasion that began on Feb. 24 confronted their Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.

High on their list of concerns was getting grain shipments from Ukraine out through ports blocked by Russia’s presence in the Black Sea and naval mines. Ukraine is a leading exporter and aid agencies have warned that many developing countries face devastating food shortages if supplies fail to reach them.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Moscow to let Ukrainian grain out, a Western official said.

“He addressed Russia directly, saying: ‘To our Russian colleagues: Ukraine is not your country. Its grain is not your grain. Why are you blocking the ports? You should let the grain out,'” the official said.

A U.S. State Department official later said Blinken had told the meeting that, if the G20 was to remain relevant, it must hold Russia accountable for its actions in Ukraine.

Earlier, Lavrov had berated the West, saying that instead of focusing on how to tackle global economic problems, ministers had embarked on “frenzied criticism” of Russia over Ukraine.

The meeting’s host, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi, said repercussions of the war would hit poor countries the hardest and it was critical to bring Ukraine and Russia’s grain and fertilizer back into supply chains.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a remote address to Slovenia’s parliament, said food shortages would lead to increased migration to Europe in what he saw as part of a Russian plan to destabilise the continent.

‘DYING IN HOUSES’

The biggest conflict in Europe since World War Two has killed thousands, displaced millions and flattened Ukrainian cities.

Russia calls it a “special military operation” intended to degrade Ukraine’s military and root out people it sees as dangerous nationalists. Ukraine and its Western allies say Russia is engaged in an unprovoked land grab.

Russian forces have seized a big chunk of territory across Ukraine’s southern flank and are waging a war of attrition in the Donbas, the eastern industrial heartland made up of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces.

Luhansk’s governor said Russian forces were indiscriminately shelling populated areas on Friday.

“They are not stopped even by the fact that civilians remain there, dying in houses and yards,” Serhiy Gaidai he said.

The situation was similar in settlements in Donetsk.

Moscow said on Sunday it had “liberated” Luhansk and now plans to capture parts of the Donetsk region it does not already control.

Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield accounts.

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Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Angus MacSwan and John Stonestreet; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Tomasz Janowski

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Suez Canal ship Ever Given partially refloated after huge effort to unblock key global trade route

CAIRO, Egypt — The giant container ship that has blocked traffic in the Suez Canal, bringing a key global trade route to a standstill and capturing the world’s attention, was partially refloated early Monday.

The Ever Given “has successfully floated after the ship responded to the pulling and towing maneuvers,” Lt. Gen. Osama Rabie, chairman of the Suez Canal Authority, said in a statement.

The stern of the ship was now 102 meters (334 feet) from the shore, he added.

Both the canal authority and Inchcape, a separate maritime logistics company that manages shipping in the canal, said that the 1,400-foot long vessel’s position had now been straightened by 80 percent.

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The skyscraper-sized ship jammed diagonally across a southern section of the Suez Canal on Tuesday, leaving a total of 367 ships, including dozens of container ships and bulk carriers, unable to use the key trading route as of Monday morning.

Dredgers worked over the weekend to dislodge the stranded vessel, shifting some 27,000 metric tons of sand to a depth of 60 feet, the canal authority said Sunday.

A total of 14 tugboats were conducting pulling maneuvers from three directions to dislodge the ship, it added.

The maneuvers were due to resume again when the tide brings the water level back up.

Maritime traffic will resume once the ship is directed toward the Great Bitter Lake, a wide stretch of water halfway between north and south end of the canal, where it will undergo technical examination, the authority said.

Shoei Kisen Kaisha Ltd., the company that owns the vessel, told NBC News early Monday that the ship was not yet refloated and that the rescue operation had been put on pause because the water level, which has posed challenges throughout the process, had receded again.

The company had previously said it was considering removing containers if other refloating efforts failed.

The stranded Panama-flagged and Japanese-owned ship had halted all traffic across the canal. Experts feared it could take weeks to free it and clear the blockage of a route that accounts for about 12 percent of global trade.

The Suez Canal usually allows 50 cargo ships pass daily between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, providing a vital trade corridor between Europe and Asia.

The closing threatened to disrupt oil and gas shipments to Europe from the Middle East. Already, Syria had begun rationing the distribution of fuel in the war-torn country because of concerns about delays of shipments arriving, The Associated Press reported.

Shipping rates for oil product tankers nearly doubled after the ship became stranded, Reuters reported, and the blockage has disrupted global supply chains, already strained by Covid-19 restrictions.

If the blockage dragged on, shippers may have been forced to reroute their cargoes around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa, adding about two weeks and extra fuel costs to journeys.

Charlene Gubash reported from Cairo, Arata Yamamoto reported from Tokyo, and Richie Duchon reported from Los Angeles.

Arata Yamamoto contributed.



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