- US urges Russia to free up grain exports
- Artillery fire peppers Donbass
- Russia says ready for a long war
- Russia says sanctions are an economic war by the West
Kyiv, July 8 (R) – Western officials on Friday tried to persuade Russia to allow Ukraine to ship its grain around the world as the four-month-old war threatened to spread hunger in countries far from the battlefields bring.
For its part, Moscow accused the West of waging an economic war against Russia by trying to isolate it with sanctions imposed over the February 24 invasion.
President Vladimir Putin warned that Russia’s military operations in Ukraine had only just begun and that the longer the conflict dragged on, the prospects for negotiations would become increasingly bleak.
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On the front lines in Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region, officials reported continued Russian shelling of towns and villages ahead of an expected new push to seize more territory.
“NOT YOUR COUNTRY”
At a meeting of G20 foreign ministers in Bali, Indonesia, some of the most outspoken critics of the Russian invasion confronted the Kremlin’s top diplomat, Sergei Lavrov.
Their main concern was extracting grain shipments from Ukraine from the blocked Black Sea ports. Ukraine is a top exporter, and aid organizations have warned that countries in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere face devastating food shortages if supplies don’t reach them.
At a plenary session, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on Moscow to let Ukrainian grain out into the world, a Western official said.
“He addressed Russia directly and said: ‘To our Russian colleagues: Ukraine is not your country. Your grain is not your grain. Why are you blocking the ports? You should let the grain out,'” the official said.
Earlier, Lavrov slammed the West, saying that instead of focusing the meeting on how to tackle global economic problems, ministers launched a “frenzied criticism” of Russia over the Ukraine conflict.
Foreign Minister of Ukraine said in a virtual address before the meeting that Russia has no place at any international meeting. Dmytro Kuleba said the international community should not allow Russia to blackmail the world with high energy prices, hunger and security threats, according to a statement from his office.
The host of the meeting, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi, said the impact of the war, including rising energy and food prices, would hit poor countries hardest.
Reintegrating grain and fertilizers from Ukraine and Russia into supply chains is crucial, she said.
“It is our responsibility to end the war sooner rather than later and settle our differences at the negotiating table, not on the battlefield,” Retno said at the opening of the talks.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a distant address to the Slovenian parliament on Friday that food shortages would prompt increased migration to Europe, which he saw as part of a Russian plan to destabilize the continent.
“Russia blocks our ports and prevents the transport of grain. Famines will cause large migration flows in the future. That is why we are working to save the countries of Africa and the Middle East and trying to feed those people,” he said.
“DYING IN HOUSES”
Putin’s statements in Moscow indicated that the prospects for a solution to the conflict were currently slim.
“We have often heard that the West wants to fight us to the last Ukrainian. This is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, but everything seems to be heading towards it,” Putin said in a speech to parliament on Thursday.
On Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reiterated this optimistic stance, saying Russia had used only a small part of its potential in its operation in Ukraine.
The biggest conflict in Europe since World War II has killed thousands, displaced millions and leveled Ukrainian cities.
Russia calls it a “military special operation” aimed at demoting Ukraine’s military and rooting out people it sees as dangerous nationalists. Ukraine and its Western allies say Russia is involved in an unjustified land grab.
Having failed to quickly take the capital Kyiv, Russia is now waging a war of attrition in Donbass, Ukraine’s industrial heartland, which consists of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
On Sunday Moscow said it had “liberated” Luhansk and now plans to seize parts of neighboring Donetsk it does not control.
Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai said on Friday that Russian forces had indiscriminately shelled villages and towns.
“They are not even stopped by the fact that civilians remain and die in houses and yards. They hit houses, any building that strikes them as a possible stronghold,” he said.
The situation in settlements in Donetsk was similar.
Vadym Lyakh, the mayor of Sloviansk, said a woman was killed overnight when Russian shelling hit an apartment building.
R could not independently verify the battlefield accounts.
Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Russian forces are likely to pause to replenish before embarking on new offensive operations in Donetsk. Russia’s immediate tactical target could be Siversk, a small industrial town north of Donetsk, sources said.
But Luhansk governor Gaidai said: “There is no pause in operations and no decrease in shelling – they are throwing more and more new units into the battle.”
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Reporting by R bureaus; writing by Angus MacSwan; Edited by Frank Jack Daniel
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