Russia attacks Ukraine's vital Danube export route in widening strikes

[July 24, 2023]  By Olena Harmash and Tom Balmforth

KYIV (Reuters) -Russia destroyed Ukrainian grain warehouses on the Danube River and wounded seven people in a drone attack on Monday, expanding the target area of an air campaign it launched last week after pulling out of the Black Sea grain deal, Kyiv said.

The attacks last week mostly targeted the sea ports of Odesa but Monday's pre-dawn strikes hit infrastructure along the Danube, an alternative export route that is vital for Kyiv after the demise of the year-old deal allowing safe exports of Ukrainian grain 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 concern that Russia's attacks and more fighting, including a drone strike on Moscow, could threaten grain exports and shipping.

News website Reni-Odesa cited a local official as saying three grain warehouses had been destroyed in the Danube port city of Reni in an attack involving about 15 drones.

Reni port, an important transport hub, looks across the Danube to NATO and European Union member Romania.

Since Russia's full-scale invasion in February last year, Ukraine has expanded grain exports overland via the European Union 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," one European trader said. "Any interruption of this traffic could quickly hit international grain supplies.

Another European grain trader said: "It’s clearly an attack on additional Ukrainian grain export infrastructure. The great concern is whether it’s an attempt to completely stop the export by land."

Storage tanks damaged by a Russian drone strike are seen in a sea port, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Odesa Region, Ukraine July 24, 2023. Press Service of the the Operational Command South of the Ukrainian Armed Forces/Handout via REUTERS

FOREIGN MINISTER'S APPEAL

Ukrainian officials did not say exactly what had been hit or where, but police said warehouses storing grain crops had been hit along with tanks for storing other types of cargo, causing a fire.

Police also published photographs showing the twisted metal of damaged facilities and firefighters putting out a fire. Containers marked with the logo of Maersk Group could be seen in one of the images.

"Russia hit another Ukrainian grain storage overnight," Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter.

"It (Russia) tries to extract concessions by holding 400 million people hostage. I urge all nations, particularly those in Africa and Asia who are most affected by rising food prices, to mount a united global response to food terrorism."

Oleksiy Danilov, head of Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council, said on Sunday the Russian attacks were "an attempt to completely isolate Ukraine's way to the Black Sea and, through an act of intimidation, to prevent and neutralize international efforts to resume the functioning of the 'grain corridor'."

(Addition reporting by Valentyn Ogirenko in Kyiv, and by Michael Hogan in Hamburg, Writing by Tom Balmforth; Editing by Timothy Heritage)

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