KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces hit port infrastructure in southern Ukraine with drones close to the border with NATO member Romania, the Ukrainian military and prosecutor-general’s office said Wednesday, damaging a grain elevator and causing a huge fire at facilities that transport the country’s crucial grain exports.
Since leaving a deal that allowed Ukraine to export grain to world markets through the city of Odesa, Russia has hammered the country’s ports with strikes. In the past two weeks, dozens of drones and missile attacks have targeted the port of Odesa and the region’s river ports, which are being used as alternative routes.
The prosecutor-general’s office said the overnight strikes hit in the area of the Danube River that forms part of the Ukraine-Romania border. It didn’t immediately give further details. Video obtained by The Associated Press showed explosions and a large fire in the distance on the Danube, captured by fishermen in Romania on the other side of the river.
Three Ukrainian ports along the Danube are currently operating.
“The goal of the enemy was clearly the facilities of the ports and industrial infrastructure of the region,” Ukraine’s South operational command wrote in an update on Facebook. As a result of the attack, a fire broke out at industrial and port facilities, and a grain elevator was damaged.
Ukraine’s air force intercepted 23 Shahed drones over the country overnight, mostly in Odesa and Kyiv, according to a morning update.
All 10 drones fired at Kyiv were intercepted, said Serhii Popko, the head of Kyiv City Administration. Numerous loud explosions were heard overnight as air defense systems were activated. Debris from felled drones hit three districts of the capital, damaging a nonresidential building, Popko said.
“Russian terrorists have once again targeted ports, grain facilities and global food security,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted Wednesday morning on Telegram. “The world must respond.”
He confirmed that some drones hit their targets, with the most “significant damage” in the south of Ukraine.
Wheat prices rose about 3% and corn prices were up nearly 2% on Wednesday following the new attacks, showing the continued volatility in world markets as Russia targets Ukraine’s ports and agricultural infrastructure.
Ukraine is a major supplier of wheat, corn, vegetable oil and other agricultural products important to the Middle East, Africa and parts of Asia where people are struggling with high food prices and hunger.
Ukraine also can export by road and rail through Europe, but those routes are more costly than going by the Black Sea and have stirred divisions among nearby countries.
Two civilians were wounded in shelling of the city of Kherson during the night, regional Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said Wednesday. A summary from Zelenskyy’s office said a doctor was killed and five medical personnel were wounded in an attack on a city hospital in Kherson, but didn’t specify if the attack was on Wednesday or Tuesday.
A 91-year-old woman died in an attack on a village in the Kharkiv region, the presidential office said.
In the eastern region of Donetsk, four people were wounded in Russian shelling over the past day, according to Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko.
The area around the city of Nikopol, across the river from the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, was shelled three times, Gov. Serhiy Lysak said.
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