Ukraine war latest: Erdogan goes over Black Sea grain handle Putin as Russia drone strikes port

Russian president Vladimir Putin informed his Turkish equivalent Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday that Moscow was prepared to go back to the Black Sea grain deal as quickly as the West satisfied its responsibilities with regard to Russia’s own grain exports.

The deal, brokered by Turkey and the United Nations in July 2022, permitted the safe export of grain from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. Last month Moscow left the deal, implicating the West of hindering Russia’s own grain and fertiliser exports.

In a declaration on Putin’s call with Erdogan, the Kremlin said: “It was noted that in the conditions of a complete lack of progress in the implementation of the Russian part of the ‘grain deal’, its further extension has lost all meaning.”

It included that Russia would go back to the deal “as soon as the West actually fulfils all the obligations to Russia” consisted of within it.

Russia’s grain and fertiliser exports are exempt to Western sanctions troubled Moscow over its military actions in Ukraine. But Moscow has actually said limitations on payments, logistics and insurance coverage have actually been a barrier to deliveries.

The U.S. envoy to the United Nations said on Tuesday there were “indications” that Russia may be thinking about going back to speak about the deal. Asked about those talk about Wednesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov worried the requirement for the West to honour parts of the deal worrying Russian exports.

With Moscow dealing with a flurry of drone attacks in recent weeks – the latest over the weekend – Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has said the war in his nation is “returning to Russia”.

While Kyiv is constantly really cagey about declaring direct duty for attacks on Russian soil, the variety of events has actually accompanied the Ukrainian counteroffensive to retake area inhabited by Moscow’s forces. All while the Kremlin is still handling the fallout from a mutiny last month by the battle-hardened mercenaries of the Wagner Group, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Askold Krushelnycky talks to Ukrainian authorities about the continuous counteroffensive and how Kyiv is looking for to make use of the prolonged fallout from Wagner’s brief mutiny:

Russia assaulted Ukraine‘s main inland port across the Danube River from Romania on Wednesday, sending global food prices higher as it ramps up its use of force to prevent Ukraine from exporting grain.

The attacks destroyed buildings in the port of Izmail and halted ships in their tracks as they prepared to arrive there to load up with Ukrainian grain in defiance of a de-facto blockade Russia reimposed in mid-July.

Ukrainian deputy prime minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said the Russian drone attacks damaged almost 40,000 tons of grains which had been destined for countries in Africa as well as China and Israel.

“Russian terrorists have once again attacked ports, grain, global food security,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Telegram.

Russian state news agency RIA said the port and grain infrastructure hit at the port was housing foreign mercenaries and military hardware and a naval ship repair yard had also been targeted. Reuters was not able to verify the report.

Video released by the Ukrainian authorities showed firefighters on ladders battling a blaze several storeys high in a building covered with broken windows. Several other large buildings were in ruins, and grain spilled out of at least two wrecked silos.

There were no reports of casualties, Odesa region governor Oleh Kiper wrote in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

Workers eliminated a Soviet symbol from the guard of the “Motherland” monolith in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Created by Soviet carver Yevgeny Vuchetich in 1981, the initial monolith included a hammer and sickle, which were removed on Tuesday, 1 August at a substance of the World War II museum in the capital city.

They will be changed by a tryzub, a three-pronged symbol of Ukraine, in time for the nation’s Independence Day on 24 August.

Yuriy Savchuk, director of the Museum of the History of Ukraine in World War II, said: “This is the moment that millions of Ukrainians, generations of Ukrainians have dreamed about.”

Russian guards subjected Ukrainian detainees to abuse and sexual violence – consisting of genital electrocution – according to a group of global specialists examining conditions in makeshift detention centres.

Almost half of Ukrainian detainees kept in Kherson, in Russian-inhabited southern Ukraine, said such methods were regular, according to the Mobile Justice Team, which was developed by global humanitarian law practice Global Rights Compliance and is dealing with war criminal activities district attorneys.

Researchers said a minimum of 36 victims explained making use of electrocution while being questioned.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said his nation is working for peace in Ukraine however neither its leader nor Russia’s are prepared to talk peace.

“Neither Putin nor Zelensky are ready for peace,” Lula informed foreign reporters in a press conference, including that peace propositions he is looking for with other neutral nations will be prepared for when Russia and Ukraine are prepared to work out.

Lula said the BRICS group of emerging economies ought to permit brand-new members “as long as they meet the requirements.” His nation has actually been the primary challenger of broadening BRICS.

Its pleasant beaches have actually been destination for Russian czars and Soviet basic secretaries. It has actually hosted history-shaking conferences of world leaders and boasts a tactical marine base. And it has actually been the website of ethnic persecutions, required deportations and political repression.

Now, as Russia’s war in Ukraine enters its 18th month, the Crimean Peninsula is once again both a play ground and a battlefield, with drone attacks and bombs looking for to remove Moscow’s hang on the area and bring it back under Kyiv’s authority, no matter how loudly the Kremlin announces its ownership.

NATO allies situated along the alliance’s eastern front are growing progressively anxious about the existence of Russia-connected Wagner group mercenaries in Belarus, where some have actually been released considering that a temporary mutiny in Russia in June.

Poland, Lithuania and Latvia — members of NATO and the European Union which border Belarus — had actually already been on alert considering that great deals of migrants and refugees started coming to their borders from Belarus 2 years earlier. They have actually implicated Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko, an ally of Russia, of opening the migration path in an act of “hybrid warfare” targeted at developing instability in the West.

Now issues have actually grown even more considering that the Wagner soldiers started showing up in Belarus after their brief mutiny in Russia.

Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said on the weekend that some 100 Wagner fighters in Belarus had actually approached the border with Poland, particularly a tactically delicate location referred to as the Suwalki Gap.

“Now the situation becomes even more dangerous,” Morawiecki informed press reporters. “This is certainly a step towards a further hybrid attack on Polish territory.”

Russia assaulted Ukraine’s grain ports in the early hours of Wednesday, consisting of an inland port throughout the Danube River from Romania, sending out worldwide food costs skyrocketing as Moscow increases its usage of force to reimpose a blockade of Ukrainian exports.

Ukraine’s defence ministry said a grain silo was harmed in the Danube port of Izmail in the Odesa area: “Ukrainian grain has the potential to feed millions of people worldwide,” the ministry composed on messaging platform X, previously referred to as Twitter.

There were no reports of casualties, Odesa area guv Oleh Kiper composed in a post on the Telegram messaging app. Kiper published a number of images revealing firefighting teams attempting to put out a fire in a blighted high-rise building beside a river.

“Unfortunately, there are damages,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Telegram.

“The most significant ones are in the south of the country. Russian terrorists have once again attacked ports, grain, global food security.”

An commercial source likewise validated Izmail was the primary target of the attack, explaining the level of damage as “serious”.

Ukraine’s district attorney’s workplace launched images revealing a war criminal activities detective outside a destroyed building, and a minimum of 2 broken silos with wheat toppling out.

The port, throughout the river from NATO-member Romania, has actually functioned as the primary alternative path out of Ukraine for grain exports considering that Russia reimposed its de facto blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports in mid-July.

“Gradually, the war is returning to the territory of Russia – to its symbolic centres and military bases, and this is an inevitable, natural and absolutely fair process,” he said in a video address from the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk.

Russia’s defence ministry yielded on Sunday (30 July) that a 50-storey building including the workplaces of a variety of federal government companies and a shopping precinct in the capital’s western Moskva-Citi business district were both struck by drone strikes it blamed on Ukraine, declaring to have actually lowered 3 more gadgets.