Russia barraged Ukrainian ports for the fourth night in a row on Friday, striking granaries in Odesa and mounting a show of naval force on the Black Sea in a deepening showdown that imperils a vital part of the global food supply.
The Kremlin this week withdrew from a year-old agreement that allows ships carrying food from Ukrainian ports to bypass a Russian blockade, and began a concentrated bombardment of facilities used to ship grain and cooking oil across the Black Sea. The Russian military warned that any vessels attempting to reach Ukraine would be treated as hostile, and their nations “will 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 near the coastline Ukraine still holds — backing up the suggestion that it could seize or destroy cargo ships of noncombatant nations. Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that a missile boat fired anti-ship cruise missiles and destroyed a “mock target” vessel, while ships and planes of the Black Sea Fleet “practiced isolating an area temporarily closed to navigation” and conducted a drill “to apprehend a mock intruder ship.”
Missile strikes around dawn destroyed 100 tons of peas and 20 tons of barley at the port in Odesa, according to Oleg Kiper, the head of the regional military administration. That came two days after an attack on a port just outside Odesa destroyed 60,000 tons of grain to be loaded onto ships, the government said — enough to feed more than 270,000 people for a year, according to the World Food Program.
The U.N. humanitarian chief, Martin Griffiths, warned the council that even escalatory rhetoric threatened to increase food prices and food instability around the globe. Prices have risen this week, but not as sharply as they did when the war began, and economists say the effect could be serious but not as severe because global supplies are more plentiful. Ukraine has stepped up its overland exports, but not nearly enough to compensate for the loss of shipping.
Russia would readily renew the deal, its representative at the U.N. meeting said, but only if other nations lift penalties imposed on it for invading Ukraine 17 months ago — conditions unlikely to be met.
On Friday, Russia’s central bank signaled concern about its economy, particularly inflation, raising its benchmark interest rate a full percentage point, to 8.5 percent — a much bigger increase than analysts had expected. The central bank projected relatively healthy…
2023-07-21 20:04:47
Post from www.nytimes.com
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