Russia bombarded Ukrainian ports for a fourth night in a row on Friday, struck grain in Odesa and mounted a naval demonstration on the Black Sea in a deepening confrontation that could damage a key part of the global food supply.
The Kremlin this week withdrew from a year-old agreement that allowed ships carrying food from Ukrainian ports to bypass the Russian blockade and launched a concentrated bombing campaign against facilities used to transport grain and cooking oil across the Black Sea. The Russian military warned that any ships attempting to reach Ukraine would be considered hostile and their nations would be “considered to be involved in the Ukrainian conflict on the side of the Kyiv regime.”
On Friday, Russia conducted naval exercises in the northwestern Black Sea — the part still near Ukraine’s coast — that support suggestions it could seize or destroy cargo ships from non-belligerent nations. The missile boat fired anti-ship cruise missiles and destroyed a “mock target” ship, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement, while Black Sea Navy ships and aircraft “practiced to isolate an area temporarily closed to navigation” and conducted a drill to “catch a mock intruder ship.”
Early morning missile attacks destroyed 100 tons of peas and 20 tons of barley in the port of Odessa, according to Oleg Kiper, head of the regional military administration. It came two days after an attack on a port outside Odessa destroyed 60,000 tonnes of grain to be loaded onto ships – enough to feed more than 270,000 people for a year, according to the World Food Programme.
“The new wave of attacks on Ukrainian ports threatens to have far-reaching consequences on global food security, particularly in developing countries,” UN Under-Secretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo told an emergency meeting of the Security Council on Friday. “Furthermore, as we have repeatedly said, attacks against civilian infrastructure can be a violation of international law.”
United Nations humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths warned the council that escalating rhetoric threatens to drive up food prices and food insecurity around the world. Prices have risen this week, but not as sharply as they did when the war began, and economists say the impact could be serious but not as severe as global supplies are more abundant. Ukraine has increased its overland exports, but not nearly enough to offset the loss of shipments.
Russia will quickly renew the agreement, its representative at the UN meeting said, but only if other nations lift sanctions imposed on Ukraine for invading Ukraine 17 months ago – Conditions are unlikely to be met.
On Friday, Russia’s central bank signaled concern about its economy, esp Inflation, raising its benchmark interest rate a full percentage point to 8.5 percent — a bigger increase than analysts had expected. The central bank projects a relatively healthy 2.5 percent economic growth this year after contracting from a similar rate last year. But the rebound has been fueled by the government pumping money into the economy with sharply higher military spending, including payments to soldiers and their families and social programs like mortgage subsidies.
Russians have more money to spend but not enough to spend, fueling inflation that the central bank predicts will reach 5 to 6.5 percent this year. The sanctions have made it difficult for businesses to import products, including manufacturing equipment, and the forced or flight of hundreds of thousands of people from the country has made it difficult to hire workers.
Ukraine and Russia have long produced a major part of the global food supply – before the war, they accounted for a quarter of the world’s wheat and barley exports and a large share of its cooking oil, especially sunflower oil, and Russia was the largest supplier of fertilizer. Russia’s blockade of Ukraine, and Western sanctions against Russia, caused their exports to fall sharply early last year, worsening shortages and price rises around the world and threatening famine in some regions, particularly East Africa.
The Black Sea Grain Initiative, brokered in July 2022 by the United Nations and Turkey, allowed ships to transport food from Ukrainian ports and included provisions to enable Russian agricultural exports. But the Kremlin complains that the factors benefiting Russia are woefully inadequate or not fully respected, reducing exports and forcing Russian producers to sell to the world at below-market prices — favoring European competitors.
For months, Moscow has made a set of demands to continue the grain initiative: allow Russia’s state-owned Agricultural Bank to rejoin the SWIFT messaging system that enables international transactions; ensure that foreign insurance and shipping companies can do business with Russian agricultural exporters without violating sanctions; allow Russia to resume importing spare parts for agricultural equipment; End sanctions against Russian fertilizer producers and their executives; and restore the pipeline carrying Russian ammonia to Odessa.
“There is no need to lift real and ideological sanctions,” Dmitry Polyansky, Russia’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, told a Security Council meeting on Friday, citing some of the same demands. “As soon as all these conditions are met, we will immediately reach an agreement.”
But Russia’s actions, beyond halting the grain deal, threaten other Black Sea shipping and hurt Ukraine’s ability to send food by sea in the coming days, after waves of missiles and attack drones were launched at port facilities this week. Russian missile and artillery attacks on other parts of the country overnight killed eight people, Ukrainian officials said.
Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum on Friday, Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken said, “Russia is doing a really unconscionable thing by weaponizing food.”
In Moscow, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin told reporters at a briefing that the grain deal could not be revived unless Russia’s demands were met and, in the meantime, Russia could stop and inspect civilian ships in the Black Sea for military goods.
On Thursday, the White House warned that Moscow was preparing a false-flag operation to attack civilian ships and blame Ukraine. The threats have halted sea traffic in the region. Ships bound for the Black Sea are sitting in ports in Istanbul, waiting to see if a deal can be reached to resume grain shipments, tracking data shows.
There are no negotiations yet, but President Vladimir V. Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are expected to discuss the issue soon, Mr Varshinin said.
They accused Ukraine of abusing a safe passage meant for grain ships to launch attack drones against a naval base in Russian-occupied Crimea and a bridge linking Crimea proper to Russia. Ukraine has denied using the corridor for military purposes.
The Institute for the Study of War in Washington wrote in an assessment published Thursday night that “the Kremlin is using the Black Sea grain initiative as one of its few remaining avenues for leverage against the West.” Russia, he said, “is trying to create a sense of urgency by carrying out intense strikes against Ukrainian port and grain infrastructure and threatening to strike civilian ships.”
Russia has been unsettled by last month’s failed coup by the Wagner mercenary group against the military leadership, prompting the ouster of some top commanders and challenging Mr Putin’s iron grip.
“A lot of Russians watching this were using this image of Putin as an arbiter of the question, ‘Does the emperor have no clothes?'” CIA director William J. Burns told the Aspen Security Forum on Friday in his most extensive public comments on the coup. “Or, at least, ‘Why does he take so long to get dressed?'”
Mr Burns said he expected Mr Putin would eventually punish Wagner leader Yevgeny V. Prigogine, who remains free and unharmed.
The arrest on Friday of Igor Girkin, an ultranationalist commentator who has been a pro-war critic of the way the invasion was carried out, suggests that the kind of public dissent the government has allowed is no longer allowed. Prosecutors charged him with broadcasting public appeals to engage in extremist activities, punishable by up to five years in prison, and asked a Moscow court to keep him in pretrial detention.
Belarus, a close ally of Russia, has taken delivery of some Wagner fighters in the past few weeks and they are training Belarusian special operations forces, the Belarusian government said Thursday. The training site is just three miles from Poland, a NATO member deeply distrustful of both Belarus and Russia.
In response, Poland said on Friday it would move military forces near the border with Belarus. Mr Putin, in turn, lashed out at Poland, saying Russia would respond “with all the means at our disposal” to “aggression” against Belarus.
Ivan Nechepurenko Reported from Tbilisi, Georgia Victoria Kim From Seoul and Farnaz Fasihi And Richard Perez-Pena From New York. The report was contributed Anatoly Kurmanev from Berlin; Neil Macfarquhar, Gaya Gupta And James C. McKinley Jr From New York; Eric Smith, David E. Sanger And Julian E. Barnes Aspen, Colo.; Shashank is Bengali From London and Erin Mendel From Seoul.
