Russia Strikes Danube Port, Escalating Attacks on Ukraine Grain Routes

Russia for the primary time on Monday attacked a port on the Danube River in Ukraine, near the Romanian border, Ukrainian and Romanian officers stated, destroying a grain hangar in an escalation of its efforts to cripple Kyiv’s agriculture and risking a extra direct confrontation with the United States and its European allies.

The assault on the port within the city of Reni, throughout the river from Romania, a NATO member, focused Kyiv’s various export routes for grain to achieve world markets, days after Russia terminated a deal that had enabled Ukraine to ship its grain throughout the Black Sea. The assault is among the closest Moscow has come to hitting the navy alliance’s territory since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine final yr.

The port strike got here amid two drones assaults in central Moscow on Monday morning that Russian officers blamed on Ukrainian forces. At least two nonresidential buildings had been hit about 4 a.m. native time, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin of Moscow stated on the Telegram messaging app. He added that there had been no “serious damage or casualties.”

Ukrainian and Romanian officers denounced the port strike, with President Klaus Iohannis of Romania condemning the assault on Ukrainian infrastructure near his nation’s borders. He stated on Twitter that the “recent escalation poses serious risks to the security in the Black Sea,” in addition to affecting Ukrainian grain shipments and international meals safety.

Romania’s Defense Ministry stated it was sustaining a posture of “enhanced vigilance” with its allies alongside the alliance’s jap flank. But the ministry added in an announcement that “there are no potential direct military threats against our national territory or Romania’s territorial waters.”

Since the Kremlin pulled out of the Black Sea Grain Initiative final week, its forces have launched a barrage of assaults practically each evening on town of Odesa — which is about 130 miles from Reni — and its Black Sea port, destroying grain shares and infrastructure. Those assaults, together with Moscow’s warning that it could contemplate any ship approaching Ukraine’s Black Sea ports as doubtlessly carrying navy cargo, made Ukraine’s various grain routes extra very important.

Ukraine, a serious producer of grain and different meals crops, has been exporting round two million metric tons of grain per 30 days via its Danube ports, in accordance with Benoît Fayaud, the deputy government director of Stratégie Grains, an agricultural financial system analysis agency.

The assault in Reni, about 70 miles from the coast, might deter business vessels from utilizing the port within the quick time period and lift the price of insurance coverage, Mr. Fayaud stated.

Global wheat costs rose by round 5.5 p.c in Monday morning buying and selling.

The Moscow and Danube assaults occurred amid a grinding battle that has seen Ukraine mount a gradual counteroffensive to take again territory seized by Russian forces. Kyiv has hardly ever admitted to attacking Russian territory removed from the entrance line, however the drone strike in Moscow was not the primary because the battle started.

In May, eight drones focused Moscow, the Russian capital, shattering home windows in three residential buildings and injuring two residents, in accordance with officers. The strikes confronted Muscovites with the fact of Russia’s battle in Ukraine, which President Vladimir V. Putin had labored to defend from their each day lives. That assault got here after Russian forces had launched one other in a sequence of in a single day assaults on Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.

After the drone strikes on Monday, movies verified by The New York Times confirmed injury in at the very least two places close to the Moskva River in southern Moscow. One constructing struck is a couple of block from the Russian National Defense Management Center, an imposing construction used to conduct “centralized combat management of the Russian armed forces,” in accordance with the ministry’s web site.

Smoke may very well be seen rising from the highest flooring of a high-rise constructing housing a French home-improvement chain. Other footage confirmed injury to a number of constructions alongside Komsomolsky Prospect — an avenue that runs via one of the upscale elements of central Moscow and that’s near the Defense Ministry — together with the constructing housing the Military University and the Central Military Band, a efficiency group of the Russian Armed Forces.

It was not attainable to find out whether or not drones had triggered the injury. But the authorities blocked off a part of Komsomolsky Prospect after discovering one of many drones there, state news media reported. The Russian authorities stated they’d destroyed two drones.

Later on Monday, one other drone crashed close to a residential constructing within the Pervomaiskoe district of Moscow, however no accidents had been instantly reported, in accordance with native news retailers.

The Danube port assault occurred over the course of 4 hours, Oleh Kiper, the pinnacle of the regional navy administration in that space of Ukraine, wrote on Telegram. Ukraine’s air defenses shot down three drones, he stated, including that seven folks had been wounded, three from shrapnel. One had severe accidents.

Mike Lee, director of Green Square Agro Consultancy, which specializes within the Black Sea and Eastern Europe, referred to as the assault on Reni a “massive escalation” by Moscow by way of the impact it might have on Ukraine’s potential to make use of various routes for its exports.

Russia beforehand fired final yr on western Ukraine close to the border with Poland, additionally a NATO member, however had not hit Ukrainian amenities so near territory lined by the navy alliance’s dedication to reply collectively to an assault on a member state.

Cheerleaders of Russia’s battle praised the strikes on the port as an extra step towards destroying Ukraine’s financial system and blocking what they described as Western arms deliveries.

They stated that Kyiv had been profiting from the port’s proximity to NATO territory — and the truth that ships can strategy it alongside the Danube with out crusing via Ukrainian waters within the Black Sea — as a method of continuous to export grain and different items through the battle.

“It looks like they’re blocking this way of evading the sea blockade of Kyiv,” a Russian speak present host, Olga Skabeyeva, stated on the Rossiya state tv channel. “And soon they’ll completely deny Ukraine access to the Black Sea.”

A preferred pro-war weblog, referred to as Rybar, additionally claimed that the Reni port was getting used to provide Ukraine’s navy, together with exporting grain.

On Monday, the F.S.B., Russia’s successor to the Okay.G.B., claimed that it had proof that Ukraine imported explosives in May throughout the Black Sea to one in all its Danube ports. The declare couldn’t be independently verified.

The Danube River delta, a community of waterways crisscrossing the border area of Moldova, Romania and Ukraine, had been hardly ever used to export Ukrainian grain earlier than the invasion, however over the previous yr, it has turn out to be indispensable.

The grain deal first brokered by the United Nations and Turkey final yr lined a trio of main Black Sea ports, and enabled Ukraine to ship greater than 30 million tons of grain. At the identical time, smaller ports on the Danube that weren’t a part of the deal had been capable of ship out shipments that wended their technique to the Black Sea and on to worldwide locations.

Those routes — in addition to overland pathways — grew to become very important after Russia terminated the Black Sea deal, saying its calls for needed to be met. Moscow had complained bitterly that the deal was biased towards Kyiv and that Western sanctions that restricted the sale of its personal agricultural merchandise needs to be lifted, amongst different calls for.

The United Nations has stated that Russia’s makes an attempt to cease Ukraine’s exports would exacerbate a starvation disaster confronted by some international locations in Africa and the Middle East. Ukraine exports grain through highway and rail into European Union international locations, in addition to through the Danube ports.

Since the beginning of the battle, Ukraine has despatched greater than 20 million tons of grain to international markets via Romania and tens of millions extra by practice via Poland, a influx that infuriated East European farmers who stated it drove down native costs. After protests in some E.U. international locations, the bloc allowed Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia to ban home gross sales of Ukrainian wheat, corn, rapeseed and sunflower seeds, although it continued to permit the transit of these objects for export elsewhere.

The ban is anticipated to finish on Sept. 15. Last week, ministers from these 5 international locations referred to as for the bans to be prolonged.

On Monday, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine pushed again on that concept, saying on Telegram that extending the ban could be “unacceptable in any form.”

Yurii Shyvala, Anton Troianovski and Gabriela Sá Pessoa contributed reporting.