2023-09-08 13:43:08
Russia continues its bombing campaign against Ukrainian food exports with a new drone attack this Thursday on grain silos and other infrastructure around the port of Izmail, next to the Danube River. It is the fourth attack in five days.
According to Oleh Kiper, governor of the Odessa region, Thursday’s attack lasted three hours. Two truck drivers were injured and several homes were damaged by the blast wave, according to information from the attorney general’s office. Without giving further details, the Ukrainian army has reported that there is damage to agricultural facilities.
Vladimir Putin has been trying to disrupt Ukrainian grain exports since July, when he withdrew from the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a deal brokered by the UN and Turkey to ensure the passage of grain ships from Ukraine.
In a meeting held this Monday in the Russian resort of Sochi, the president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, failed to convince Putin to resume the agreement. The rise in global food prices triggered by the collapse of the pact has had a direct impact on humanitarian aid supplies to areas at risk of famine.
Russia is concentrating its bombing on Izmail, Ukraine’s largest port on the Danube, where grain is loaded onto ships that then transport it through the territorial seas of Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey; or to the west, by river, to take it to the rest of Europe.
The bombing of the grain facilities comes as the Kremlin criticizes the United States for the decision to deliver depleted uranium shells to Ukraine, described by Moscow as a “criminal act.”
“It is an example of the scandalous indifference that Washington feels about the environmental repercussions of using this type of munitions in a war zone,” said Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister.
Russia has several depleted uranium weapons in its arsenal. From Berlin, the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons talks about multiple reports that Russia has used these types of weapons in Ukraine. These reports could not be confirmed.
Depleted uranium projectiles are used to pierce armor. They are not prohibited under international law, but there are concerns about their health effects. Its radioactivity is less than that of unrefined natural uranium and, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the radiological risk for the population in areas where there is depleted uranium in the environment is not significant. But the IAEA also warns of a possible risk of radiological effects in people who come into direct contact with ammunition or fragments that incorporate the chemical element.
The announcement of the delivery of American depleted uranium weapons coincided with the start of the visit to Ukraine by Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State. On his second day of travel, Blinken visited Yahidne this Thursday, which is part of the northern Chernihiv region and was one of the areas occupied by Russia in the first weeks of the war.
In Yahidne Blinken visited the basement of a school where Russian forces locked up dozens of villagers for a month. “This is just a building… [pero] It’s a story we’ve seen time and time again,” Blinken said.
Blinken also met with President Volodymyr Zelensky and other senior Ukrainian government officials to discuss the progress of the counteroffensive against Russian forces. There are Ukrainian leaders upset by the statements in off the record what senior US officials have done in recent weeks frustrated by the speed and tactics of the counter-offensive.
For Blinken, the slowness of the counteroffensive is understandable. “The Russians have had a lot of time this time to prepare the counteroffensive; “They have placed thousands, tens of thousands, of mines,” he told NBC News in kyiv, according to the transcript of the interview.
“The Ukrainians are making their way past other defensive reinforcements. After all, they have determination. “They have a desire that, in my opinion, will surpass anything the Russians put in their way,” he added.
Mykhailo Podolyak, Zelensky’s advisor, confirmed Blinken’s statements. In kyiv he spoke to The Guardian newspaper and said that the counteroffensive will begin to gain speed as soon as Russia’s defense lines are breached. “It is not the same Russia as last year in Kharkov and Kherson, where they fled at full speed; Now they have understood that they have to invest in good lines of defense… We will break through these lines, and as soon as we do we will see a very different situation,” he said.
According to Podolyak, the size and fortification of Russia’s defensive lines are also an indicator of the Kremlin’s reduced war ambitions, which does not plan major offensives except in a few local areas. “They don’t have the reserves, the resources or the desire to continue moving forward. Its main interest is that the lines do not move. “They don’t want to move forward, but they also don’t want to allow withdrawal, as that would start the process of disintegration of the country,” he said.
Zelensky undertook a major political reorganization this week with the dismissal of Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, who had been in office since before the outbreak of the war. Several corruption scandals had hit the Ministry in recent months. “We need more trust; confidence in the decisions that are made, confidence in the acquisitions that are made, confidence in the supplies,” Zelensky told the new minister, Rustem Umerov, on Thursday.
With a reputation as a skilled negotiator and good contacts in Turkey and the Middle East, Umerov said his goal was to strengthen Ukraine’s international alliances and develop “partnerships that may even be unexpected.”
Near the front, in the eastern town of Kostiantynivka, funerals began Thursday for the 16 killed during Wednesday’s attack on a crowded market, which injured another 32 people. Mykola and Natalia Shyrai, a couple who died while selling flowers at the market, were buried in a village near Kostiantynivka.
As Blinken said, the attack has been a reminder of “what Ukrainians experience every day.”
Translation by Francisco de Zárate
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