During the night, Russia launched an airstrike on one of Ukraine’s largest grain export ports, Ukrainian officials announced, just hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan were scheduled to hold talks.
Ukrainian air forces urged residents of the port city of Izmail, one of Ukraine’s two major grain export ports on the Danube in the Odessa region, to seek shelter after midnight on Monday. Some Ukrainian media reported sounds of explosions in the area.
Putin and Erdogan are set to meet on Monday in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi as Ankara and the United Nations seek to revive the Black Sea grain export agreement that helped alleviate the global food crisis. Ankara has called the talks crucial to the agreement.
Russia abandoned the agreement in July, a year after it was reached with the mediation of the United Nations and Turkey, citing obstacles to its own food and fertilizer exports and insufficient grain going to countries in need.
After withdrawing from the Black Sea grain agreement, Moscow launched frequent attacks on the Danube ports, which have since become Ukraine’s main route for grain exports.
Monday’s attack, the scale of which is not immediately known, followed Russian strikes on Sunday on another major Danube port, Reni, which damaged the port’s infrastructure and injured at least two people, Reuters reported.
Four Ukrainian military boats destroyed
The Russian Ministry of Defense announced today that the naval aviation in the Black Sea had destroyed four fast military boats of “Willard Sea Force” of American manufacture, which were carrying landing groups of Ukrainian armed forces.
“Last night, in the northwest part of the Black Sea, the naval aviation of the Black Sea Fleet destroyed four fast military boats of the ‘Willard Sea Force,’ American production, which were carrying landing groups of Ukrainian armed forces,” the ministry said in a statement via Telegram.
The statement said that four boats carrying up to 50 Ukrainian special forces soldiers were destroyed. According to the Russian Ministry, the Ukrainian boats were traveling in the direction of Cape Tarhankut, west of the annexed Crimean Peninsula.
Moscow also reported that it shot down a Ukrainian drone near Crimea and another in the Russian Kursk region bordering Ukraine.