Russia has launched an air attack on Kyiv as Ukraine claims a drone attack in central Moscow amid rising tensions.
Key points:
- The attack on Kyiv was in response to a Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow
- The US and UN have called on Russia to rejoin the Black Sea grain deal
- The attacks are the latest in a series of back and forth between the two countries
“On the outskirts of Kyiv, air defence systems are being engaged (in repelling the attack),” Serhiy Popko, head of the Ukrainian capital’s military administration said on Telegram.
Ukraine on Monday claimed a drone attack in central Moscow that hit buildings including one close to Russia’s Defence Ministry’s headquarters.
It came one day after Kyiv vowed to retaliate for a Russian missile strike in the city of Odesa.
A Ukrainian defence source told AFP that the drone attack was a “special operation” by Ukraine’s military intelligence.
Nobody was hurt in the attack, of which a senior Ukrainian official said there would be more.
Russia said that it could warrant “tough retaliatory measures” calling the attack a brazen act of terror.
“We regard what happened as yet another use of terrorist methods and intimidation of the civilian population,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry added.
AFP reporters at the scene of the strike near the ministry saw a two-storey building with its roof torn apart by the impact of the drone’s crash.
“It was 3:39am. The house really shook,” said Vladimir, 70, who lives nearby.
“It is scandalous that a Ukrainian drone almost flew into the defence ministry.”
The United States said it did not support attacks inside Russia during a White House press briefing on Monday.
In Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014, Moscow-installed governor Sergei Aksyonov said an ammunition depot had also been hit by drones on Monday.
Road traffic resumed on the bridge linking Russia to the Crimean Peninsula, Russian officials said early on Tuesday, after being closed down for about three hours without explanation.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine’s Odesa region, officials reported a four-hour Russian drone attack on port infrastructure on the Danube River.
“A grain hangar was destroyed and tanks for storing other types of cargo were damaged,” Ukraine’s southern military command said on Telegram.
The Danube delta region, which spans across Romania and Ukraine, is being used as an export route for Ukrainian grain — a key factor in the conflict.
Grain tensions
Russia last week pulled out of a key deal which had allowed the safe export of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea, and since then Kyiv has accused Russia of targeting grain supplies and infrastructure.
In June, Brussels agreed to allow Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania to restrict imports of grain from Ukraine through September.
But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday branded as “unacceptable” any move by the European Union to extend the curbs to protect local farmers who fear being undercut.
White House press secretary Karine-Jean Pierre called on Russia to stop attacking Ukraine grain supplies and return to the Black Sea grain initiative.
“The Kremlin’s actions … have caused serious volatility to food prices, which will hurt impoverished and hard hit areas of the world the most.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres made similar pleas on Monday during a speech in Rome at the opening of a three-day food summit.
“The most vulnerable will pay the highest price,” Mr Guterres said lamenting that there are already negative effects on global wheat and corn prices.
Wheat prices have risen more than 14 per cent since Monday, when Russia pulled out of the grain deal, and corn prices are up more than 10 per cent.
Both Russia and Ukraine are “essential to global food security,” the UN chief said.
“I remain committed to facilitating unimpeded access to global markets for food products and fertiliser from both Ukraine and the Russian Federation and to deliver the food security every person deserves,” Mr Guterres said.
The war rages on
Ms Jean-Pierre said the attacks on Odesa including the one which killed two people and severely damaged a historic cathedral have been devastating.
She also expressed concern that “Russian military may expand their targeting of Ukrainian grain facilities to include attacks against civilian ships in the Black Sea.”
Also on Monday, a child was killed and six people wounded in a Russian strike on the east Ukraine city of Kostiantynivka, the region’s governor said.
In a separate incident, an AFP video journalist was wounded by a drone attack while reporting at a Ukrainian artillery position.
Dylan Collins, a US citizen, sustained multiple shrapnel injuries in the attack in a forested area near Bakhmut. He was evacuated to a nearby hospital and doctors have said his condition was not life-threatening.
Kyiv meanwhile said it had recaptured over 16 square kilometres of territory from Russian forces last week in the east and south, nearly two months into its highly-anticipated counteroffensive.
The prolonged conflict has drawn in neighbouring states, and staunch Russian ally Belarus said Monday it was reviewing security with members of Russia’s Wagner mercenaries after their failed uprising back home.
Interior Minister Ivan Kubrakov met Wagner commanders at a training centre to draw up a “clear plan of action”, a statement said.
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko is hosting the fighters after brokering a deal that convinced their leader Yevgeny Prigozhin to end a June march on Moscow and exile himself in Belarus.
Reuters/AFP/AP