A day after Russia declared that all commercial ships heading to Ukrainian ports could be treated as hostile, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense responded on Thursday with its own warning, saying that ships heading to Russian ports or ports in occupied Ukraine would be seen as carrying “military cargo, with all the corresponding risks.”
“By openly threatening civilian ships carrying food from Ukrainian ports, launching missile and drone attacks on civilian infrastructure in peaceful cities, and deliberately creating a military threat on trade routes, the Kremlin has turned the Black Sea into a danger zone” for Russian ships, the ministry said.
The tit-for-tat warnings stepped up tensions in the Black Sea, raising fears the war could escalate and severely disrupt commercial shipping, which would wreak havoc on world grain supplies. It comes just days after Russia pulled out of a U.N.-brokered deal that for a year had allowed Ukrainian grain exports to reach the wider world, easing global food shortages. Russia and Ukraine are both major growers of wheat.
A White House official warned that Russia had also mined the routes into Ukraine’s ports, adding to the complex maze of Ukrainian mines and making a resumption of shipping of Ukraine’s grain much more difficult.
“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,” Adam Hodge, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said in a statement late Wednesday night.
Russia’s Black Sea fleet certainly has the ability to sink unarmed commercial ships. Ukraine lacks a functioning navy but has had some success targeting Russian warships with missiles and drones. Last year, its forces sank Russia’s flagship, the Moskva.
Russia also unleashed another night of attacks against Ukrainian port cities early on Thursday, in what appeared to be another prong in its effort to block Ukraine’s grain exports.
At least 19 people, including one child, were injured in the city center of Mykolaiv, a port city a short distance up an estuary off the Black Sea, after an explosion sparked a fire at a residential building, according to Vitaly Kim, the head of the regional military administration.
The nearby port city of Odesa, already reeling from two nights of some of the biggest assaults on the city since the beginning of the war, was also targeted, resulting in a large fire in the city center, according to the regional military administrator.
Buildings had been hit and at least one person had been found dead under the rubble, Oleh Kiper, the regional governor of Odesa, said in a post on the Telegram messaging app. At least two people were injured.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense on Wednesday issued a warning to shipping operators and other nations suggesting that any attempt to bypass the blockade might be seen as an act of war, saying that ships heading to Ukrainian ports would be considered “potential carriers of military cargo.” The statement sent wheat prices skyrocketing.
The Black Sea Grain Initiative enabled food exports from Ukraine, one of the world’s major exporters of wheat, corn, sunflower seeds and vegetable oil, to reach global markets, tempering prices and easing shortages.
Wednesday’s missile and drone attacks appeared to home in on Ukraine’s grain export infrastructure, Ukrainian officials said. In Chornomorsk, just south of Odesa, 60,000 tons of grain waiting to be loaded on to ships was destroyed in the attack, according to Ukraine’s agricultural minister. That is enough to feed more than 270,000 people for a year, according to the World Food Program.
Josep Borrell Fontelles, the European Union’s top diplomat, harshly criticized Russia, saying that not only had Moscow withdrawn from the grain agreement, “but they are burning the grain,” too.
“What we already know is that this is going to create a big, a huge food crisis in the world,” he told reporters ahead of an E.U. meeting in Brussels.