Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) – Russia announced on Saturday that it will suspend implementation of a UN-brokered grain deal that has exported more than 9 million tons of grain from Ukraine during the war and cut soaring world food prices.
The Russian Defense Ministry cited an alleged Ukrainian drone attack on ships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet anchored off the coast of occupied Crimea as the reason for the move, which Russian sources said took place early on Saturday. Ukraine has denied the attack, saying the Russians mishandled their own weapons.
The Russian statement came a day after UN chief Antonio Guterres urged Russia and Ukraine to renew the grain export agreement. Guterres also called on other countries, mainly in the west, to speed up the removal of barriers blocking Russian grain and fertilizer exports.
The UN chief said the grain deal – brokered by the United Nations and Turkey in July and set to expire on November 19 – is helping “mitigate the suffering this global cost-of-living crisis is inflicting on billions,” his spokesman said said.
A Guterres spokesman said UN officials are in contact with Russian authorities about the announced suspension.
“It is vital that all parties refrain from doing anything that would jeopardize the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which is a crucial humanitarian effort that is clearly having a positive impact on access to food for millions of people,” said spokesman Stephane Dujarric .
The Russian Foreign Ministry on Saturday accused British specialists of being involved in the alleged drone attack on Russian ships in Crimea.
“In connection with the actions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, led by British specialists, aimed, among other things, at Russian ships that ensure the functioning of the humanitarian corridor in question (which cannot be qualified otherwise than as a terrorist attack), the Russian side can the We do not guarantee the safety of civilian dry cargo vessels participating in the Black Sea Initiative and are suspending their implementation indefinitely from today,” the Russian statement said.
The British Ministry of Defense had no immediate comment.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba accused Russia of playing “hunger games” by jeopardizing global food supplies.
“We have warned of Russia’s plans to destroy the[Korn Agreement]. Now, under false pretenses, Moscow is blocking the grain corridor that ensures food security for millions of people,” he tweeted on Saturday.
The head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, denounced the suspension as “primitive blackmail”.
Turkish officials said they had received no official notice of the deal’s suspension.
Russia’s agriculture minister said Moscow is ready to “completely replace Ukrainian grain and provide supplies at affordable prices to all interested countries.” Speaking on state television channel Rossiya 24, Dmitry Patrushev said Moscow is ready, with the help of Turkey, “to deliver up to 500,000 tons of grain free of charge to the poorest countries over the next four months”.
Patrushev also reiterated the Kremlin’s previous claims that a disproportionate amount of grain exported from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports was destined for European destinations.
Earlier on Saturday, Ukraine and Russia offered differing versions of the 2014 drone strike in Crimea that damaged at least one Russian ship in port on the Moscow-annexed Ukrainian peninsula.
The Russian Defense Ministry said a minesweeper suffered “minor damage” during a suspected Ukrainian attack on naval and civilian ships in Sevastopol, where the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is located. The ministry claimed Russian forces “fended off” 16 attacking drones.
Sevastopol Region Governor Mikhail Razvozhaev said the port had experienced “probably the most massive attack” by air and sea drones. He offered no evidence and said all videos from the area were being withheld for security reasons.
However, an adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry claimed that “careless handling of explosives” caused explosions on four Russian Black Sea Fleet warships. Anton Gerashchenko wrote on Telegram that the ships were a frigate, a landing ship and a cruise missile ship used in a deadly attack on a western Ukrainian city in July.
In other developments on Saturday, Russian troops moved large numbers of sick and wounded comrades from hospitals in southern Ukraine’s Kherson region and stripped the facilities of medical equipment, Ukrainian officials said, as their forces fought to retake the province.
Kremlin-installed authorities in the largely Russian-held region had earlier urged civilians to leave the city of Kherson, the region’s capital — and reportedly joined the tens of thousands who had fled to other Russian-controlled areas.
“The so-called evacuation of invaders from the temporarily occupied territory of the Kherson region, including medical facilities, continues,” said the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Russians were “dismantling the entire health care system” in Kherson and other occupied territories.
“The occupiers decided to close medical facilities in the cities, take away equipment and ambulances. everything,” Zelensky said.
Kherson is one of four regions in Ukraine that Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed last month and subsequently declared martial law. The others are Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhia.
While Kiev’s forces sought reinforcements in the south, Russia continued shelling and rocket attacks in the east of the country, Ukrainian authorities said on Saturday. Three more civilians died and eight others were wounded in the Donetsk region, which has once again become a frontline hotspot as Russian soldiers attempt to seize the town of Bakhmut, a key target in Russia’s stalled eastern offensive.
Russian shelling also hit an industrial building in southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region. About a quarter of the region – including the capital Zaporizhia – remains under Ukrainian military control.
In the most recent prisoner exchange, 52 Ukrainians, including two former defenders at the Azovstal Steel Works in Mariupol, were released on Saturday as part of an exchange with Russia, according to Yermak. Today, the steelworks in the bombed-out port city symbolize the Ukrainian resistance.
Also released was a sailor who had been defending Ukraine’s Snake Island, a strategic Black Sea outpost captured by Russia in the early hours of the war. Others returning home were Ukrainian soldiers captured by Moscow near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant – the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986 – which was briefly occupied by Russian forces in February-March.
___
This version has been corrected to show that the Russian Defense Ministry said one ship, not two, was slightly damaged in Crimea port.
___
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine