The Telegraph
Russia preparing to attack cargo ships in Black Sea, Britain and America warn
James Kilner – July 20, 2023
Ukraine will attack all Russian cargo ships travelling in the north-eastern sector of the Black Sea, its military has said, in retaliation to a similar warning from the Kremlin.
It issued the warning after Russia pulled out of a grain export deal and said that it would now regard all ships heading to Ukraine as smuggling weapons.
”The Kremlin has turned the Black Sea into a danger zone,” Ukraine’s military said in a statement. “The fate of the Moskva cruiser proves that Ukraine’s defence forces have the necessary means to repel Russian aggression.
A Russian missile destroyed the ‘Moskva’, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, in April 2022.
Ukraine’s military said that it too would now regard all cargo ships bound for Russia as carrying weapons.
Tension has soared in the Black Sea since Monday when the Kremlin pulled out of a deal that allowed Ukraine to export grain.
The Black Sea is an important trade shipping route. As well as carrying cargo from ports in Russia and Ukraine ships also transport goods between Georgia, Turkey and the EU.
The British Ministry of Defence said on Thursday that Russia would now attack or intercept all cargo ships heading to Ukraine.
“The Russian Black Sea Fleet will likely now take a more active role in disrupting any trade which continues,” it said.
Russia has laid additional sea mines in the approaches to Ukrainian ports, White House National Security Council spokesman Adam Hodge said.
“We believe that this is a coordinated effort to justify any attacks against civilian ships in the Black Sea and lay blame on Ukraine for these attacks.”
The warnings come as Russian missiles hit Odesa and Mykoliav, Ukraine’s largest ports, for the third consecutive night.
Videos from the missile strikes on the ports show flames pouring out of destroyed buildings. At least one person was killed in Odesa and seven more were injured. In Mykolaiv, 20 people were injured.
“Russians hit the city centre. A garage and a three-storey residential building are on fire,” said Vitaliy Kim, the Mykolaiv governor.
Odesa and Mykolaiv are the two biggest ports in Ukraine and have been targeted since Moscow pulled out of a grain export deal on Monday.
The Kremlin has said that it is retaliating against an alleged Ukrainian strike on the 12-mile bridge that connects occupied Crimea to the Russian mainland, but Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, linked the attacks to Russia’s withdrawal from the grain deal.
“The target is not only Ukraine,” he said. “Everybody in the world is being affected by this Russian terror.”
He said the Kremlin had destroyed a silo in Odesa that was storing 60,000 tonnes of grain bound for China, one of Russia’s key allies.
Under the UN-negotiated deal, Russia had approved Ukrainian cargo ships to dock at the ports to pick up grain after it had inspected them for weapons.
Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has said that he will return to the grain deal if Ukraine reopens an ammonia pipeline that runs from central Russia.
Ukraine is one of the world’s biggest grain exporters. Global leaders have warned that grain prices will now surge and people in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia will go hungry.
“It worsens the food security outlook and risks adding to global food inflation, especially for low-income countries,” the International Monetary Fund said.
The Kremlin has been courting African leaders and they are due in St Petersburg for meetings with Putin next week.