Kyiv, Ukraine –
Russia resumed its blockade of Ukrainian ports on Sunday, cutting off urgently needed grain exports to starving parts of the world in what US President Joe Biden called a “really outrageous” act.
Biden, speaking in Wilmington, Delaware, warned that world hunger could rise due to Russia’s suspension of a UN-brokered deal to allow safe passage for ships carrying grain from Ukraine, one of the world’s breadbaskets.
“It’s really outrageous,” Biden said on Saturday. “What they are doing has no merit. The UN brokered that deal and that should be the end of it.”
Biden spoke hours after Russia announced it would immediately halt its involvement in the grain deal, claiming that Ukraine carried out a drone attack Saturday against Russia’s Black Sea Fleet off the coast of occupied Crimea. Ukraine has denied the attack, saying Russia mishandled its own weapons.
A ship carrying 40,000 tons of grain bound for Ethiopia under the United Nations aid program was unable to leave Ukraine on Sunday as a result of Russia’s “grain corridor blockade,” said Oleksandr Kubrakov, infrastructure minister. from Ukraine, on Twitter. He did not specify which Ukrainian port the ship, the Ikraia Angel, was scheduled to sail from.
The grain initiative has enabled more than 9 million tons of grain in 397 ships to safely leave Ukrainian ports since it was signed in July. UN chief Antonio Guterres urged Russia and Ukraine on Friday to renew the agreement when it expires on November 19. The grain deal has succeeded in reducing global food prices by 15% from their peak in March, according to the UN, which has listed Ethiopia as one of the countries most at risk of food shortages.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that 176 ships loaded with grain for more than 7 million consumers are being blocked.
“Why is it that a handful of people somewhere in the Kremlin can decide whether there will be food on people’s tables in Egypt or Bangladesh?” he said Saturday in his late-night video address.
Turkey’s Defense Ministry said on Sunday that no more ships from Ukraine would leave, but those already waiting near Istanbul would be inspected on Sunday or Monday. The statement said Defense Minister Hulusi Akar was in talks with his counterparts to “resolve the issue and continue the grain initiative.”
Russia has requested a meeting of the UN Security Council on Monday to discuss the alleged attack and the security of the Black Sea grain corridor. Guterres delayed a trip to Algiers by a day for talks aimed at ending Russia’s suspension of the grain export deal.
Analysts say that Russia, by withdrawing from the agreement, indicates that it sees it as a way to put pressure on Ukraine.
“By leaving the deal now and blaming Ukraine, the goal is to curb Ukrainian attacks around the Black Sea,” said Mario Bikarski, Europe analyst at The Economist’s Intelligence Unit. Russia may be waiting for Ukraine’s Western allies to ask it to concentrate its forces elsewhere to preserve the grain deal, he said.
More conflicting details emerged on Sunday about the alleged attack on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
The municipality of Mariupol, a Ukrainian port captured by Russia in the Sea of Azov, said on Telegram that Ukrainian special services had destroyed at least three Russian warships near the city of Sevastopol in the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula.
An adviser to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry claimed that “careless handling of explosives” by the Russians had led to explosions on four Russian warships. Anton Gerashchenko wrote on Telegram that the ships included a frigate, a landing ship, and a ship carrying cruise missiles.
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed on Sunday that one of the drones that attacked Sevastopol may have been launched from a civilian ship carrying agricultural products from Ukraine. The ministry said an inspection of the wreckage showed the drones used Canadian-made navigation technology and the launch point was off the Ukrainian coast near the port of Odessa. The ministry claimed that the ships that were attacked had helped ensure the security of the Black Sea grain corridor.
Independent verification of each side’s claims was not possible.
Russia’s action faces international condemnation for the suspension of the grain deal. In a Sunday tweet, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell urged Russia to reverse its decision.
Russia had been seeking to withdraw from the deal for some time, said the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.
On the diplomatic front, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said any peace talks between Russia and Ukraine should take place with Washington, whom Russia considers the “mastermind” of Kyiv.
“Obviously, the decisive vote belongs to Washington. It is impossible to talk about anything, for example, with Kyiv,” Peskov said on Russian state television.
Ukraine and the United States are unlikely to agree to such a demand.
On the front lines, Russian missile strikes continued to hit key frontline hotspots in Ukraine. The Russians shelled seven Ukrainian regions in the past 24 hours, killing at least five civilians and wounding nine more, Ukraine’s presidential office said.
In the eastern Donetsk region, where fighting continues near the towns of Bakhmut and Avdiivka, eight towns and villages were bombed.
Earlier this month, Moscow stepped up its missile and drone attacks on Ukraine’s power plants, waterworks and other key infrastructure, damaging 40% of Ukraine’s electricity system and forcing the government to implement rolling blackouts. Kyiv’s mayor said the Ukrainian capital’s power system was operating in “emergency mode”.
Also, in areas Ukraine has retaken, residents are still retrieving the bodies of slain civilians, Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said.
“Only in the last 24 hours, in three unoccupied towns and villages, we found abandoned bodies of Ukrainian civilians,” Kyrylenko said. “The Russians are ignoring all principles of war. Every week we discover individual or mass graves of civilians.”
Ukraine’s Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskiy said on Sunday that Russian forces were mining the territories they are leaving behind at twice the density of during the first months of the war.
“Practically everything in the newly vacated territories has been mined,” Monastyrskiy told Ukrainian television.
Power outages were reported on Sunday in the occupied Ukrainian city of Enerhodar, home to the closed Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe. Ukrainian and Russian officials have traded blame for the bombing that caused the blackout.