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Aug 12 (Reuters) – Ukraine hammered Russia’s Black Sea port city of Novorossiysk in a massive overnight drone attack which put two major grain terminals out of action, according to Russian industry sources, and which Kyiv said had targeted a naval base there.
Russia is the world’s largest wheat exporter and most of those exports are shipped via its Black Sea ports like Novorossiysk. Russia’s main grain lobby group warned last month that Ukrainian attacks could shut down grain exports via the Black Sea in the near future, pushing up prices and causing hunger in Africa and the Middle East.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Telegram that Ukraine had hit Russia’s Novorossiysk naval base with drones, missiles and unmanned boats. Russia moved some of its Black Sea Fleet vessels to Novorossiysk after Kyiv’s forces attacked them repeatedly in Crimea, which Moscow seized and annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Veniamin Kondratyev, the governor of Krasnodar region, where Novorossiysk is located, said a “massive” wave of Ukrainian attacks had targeted the area and killed at least two people, including an 8-year-old child.
Andrei Kravchenko, the mayor of Novorossiysk, said four unspecified enterprises and more than two dozen residential buildings had been damaged in the attack.
Unverified video on social media showed images of a tower of flames and smoke rising from somewhere in Novorossiysk.
Aside from grain export terminals, Novorossiysk also hosts oil export infrastructure, including for the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), which is owned partly by U.S. oil majors Chevron and Exxon Mobil and carries Kazakh oil exports to market.
The Financial Times reported on Wednesday that Ukraine has halted its strikes on tankers servicing the CPC after a request from U.S. Vice President JD Vance. There was no indication that the CPC or tankers collecting oil from the pipeline had been struck during the overnight attacks.
In Sevastopol in Crimea, more than three dozen drones were downed, the city’s Russian-installed governor, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said on Telegram.
Separately, a Russian attack caused a fire at a shopping mall in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, regional Governor Ivan Fedorov said on Telegram, posting pictures of a building ablaze.
A Russian attack on Odesa, Ukraine’s largest seaport, damaged infrastructure there, Serhiy Lysak, head of the city’s military administration, said on Telegram, without giving details.
Moscow has intensified its strikes on Ukraine’s logistics and warehouse facilities in response to Kyiv’s attacks on Russian energy, port and logistic hubs.
Zelenskiy said on Tuesday that Kyiv had handed proposals to U.S. negotiators for a plan to end the conflict, which started when Russia launched its full-scale war on Ukraine in February 2022.
(Reporting by Reuters in Kyiv and Moscow and by Jekaterīna Golubkova in Tokyo; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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