Russia carried out a second consecutive day of missile strikes on Ukrainian ports, wounding four people, Ukrainian officials said on Saturday.
The attacks on Ukraine’s southern Odesa region come amid Russian efforts to shut down Ukrainian shipping centers, which have recently announced plans to increase their operations after being blockaded earlier in the war. The back-to-back days of Russian missiles damaged a boarding house, a granary, local apartment buildings, and nine trucks, The New York Times reported.
The four people hurt in the latest round of attacks were reportedly injured by broken glass from the explosions.
When Russia launched its all-out war on Ukraine in Feb. 2022, the international community worried that the attacks could spell famine for other countries. Ukraine is one of the world’s largest exporters of grain, especially to Africa. With war sweeping the country and Ukraine’s Black Sea ports under fire, exports stood to plummet and food prices to skyrocket.
In summer 2022, the U.N. helped broker an agreement between Ukraine and Russia that would allow shipments of food to leave Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. But Russia backed out of the deal this summer, saying it would only rejoin the accord if its own shipping demands were met.
The move, Reuters reported, resulted in a “de facto Russian blockade,” which Ukraine announced it would defy this week, with a dozen ships scheduled to pass through its Black Sea shipping corridor.
But other nations have warned that the route might be dangerous. On Thursday, the U.K. accused Russia of planting mines on routes into the Black Sea. The explosives would threaten civilian ships. (That same day, a Turkish cargo ship on route to a Ukrainian port in the Black Sea hit a mine, but was not damaged, Turkish authorities said.)
British officials warned that Russia might try to blame Ukraine for mine explosions, and that the threat of mines was meant to deter other nations from doing business with Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Russia has kept up a missile campaign against Ukrainian grain and shipping infrastructure in the region. Since backing out of the shipping ceasefire in July, Russia has destroyed an estimated 300,000 tons of grain: enough “to feed over 1.3 million people for a year,” U.K. officials estimate.
