Moscow says Odesa strike won’t affect grain plan
Russia on Monday said its missile strike on Odesa was targeted on a military base and would not impact the grain imports from the Black Sea port under a Turkish-brokered deal.
Russia carried out a fresh attack on Ukraine after it signed an agreement to create safe corridors for Ukrainian grain shipments blocked since the invasion that raised global food prices, reports Bloomberg.
Ukraine is in the process of resuming exports.
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Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said Russia does not intend to cut gas supplies to Europe and would reinstall a repaired Nord Stream 1 turbine once it arrives and resume flows to technical capacity.
The comments come as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov began a tour of Africa by decrying the impact of sanctions on Russia's food exports and renewing a threat to remove what he called Ukraine's "regime" despite slow progress on the ground.
On 22 July, Russia and Ukraine signed a landmark deal to reopen Ukrainian Black Sea ports for grain exports, raising hopes that an international food crisis aggravated by the Russian invasion can be eased.
A blockade of Ukrainian ports by Russia's Black Sea fleet, trapping tens of millions of tonnes of grain in silos and stranding many ships, has worsened global supply chain bottlenecks and, along with sweeping Western sanctions, stoked galloping inflation in food and energy prices around the world.
