Russia insists strike on Ukrainian port of Odesa hit military targets

No grain storage facilities hit, loading at Odesa's docks unaffected: Ukraine

Russian defence ministry officials on Sunday insisted that an airstrike on the port of Odesa — less than a day after Russia and Ukraine signed an agreement on resuming grain shipments from there — had hit only military targets.

“In the seaport in the city of Odesa, on the territory of a shipyard, sea-based high-precision long-range missiles destroyed a docked Ukrainian warship and a warehouse with Harpoon anti-ship missiles supplied by the US to the Kyiv regime,” ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said at a daily briefing.

The United States condemned the  attack. “This attack casts serious doubt on the credibility of Russia’s commitment to yesterday’s deal and undermines the work of the UN, Turkey, and Ukraine to get critical food to world markets,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had said in his nightly televised address on Saturday that the attack on Odesa “destroyed the very possibility” of dialogue with Russia.

Command spokeswoman Nataliya Humenyuk said that no grain storage facilities were hit. Turkey’s defence minister, however, said he had received reports from Ukrainian authorities that one missile struck a grain silo while another landed nearby, although neither affected loading at Odesa’s docks.

Elsewhere on Sunday, Ukrainian authorities reported that Russian shelling continued to kill and injure civilians in Ukraine’s south and east.

The governor of the eastern Donetsk region, one of two which make up Ukraine’s industrial heartland of the Donbas and a key focus of Russia’s offensive, said that two civilians had been killed and two more had been injured over the previous 24 hours.

The UK military on Sunday morning reported in its daily intelligence update that Russia was making “minimal progress” in its ongoing Donbas offensive, which it said remained small-scale and focused on eastern Donetsk region.