Ukraine has forged ahead with efforts to restart grain exports from its Black Sea ports under a deal aimed at easing global food shortages but warns deliveries would suffer if a Russian missile strike on Odesa was a sign of more to come.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy denounced Saturday’s attack as “barbarism” showing Moscow could not be trusted to implement a deal struck a day earlier with Turkish and United Nations mediation.

The Ukrainian military, quoted by public broadcaster Suspilne, said the Russian missiles did not hit the port’s grain storage area or cause significant damage. 

Kyiv said preparations to resume grain shipments were ongoing.

“We continue technical preparations for the launch of exports of agricultural products from our ports,” Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said in a Facebook post.

The Ukrainian military said two Kalibr missiles fired from Russian warships hit the area of a pumping station at the port and two others were shot down by air defence forces.

Russia said on Sunday its forces had hit a Ukrainian warship and a weapons store in Odesa with precision missiles.

The deal signed by Moscow and Kyiv on Friday was hailed as a diplomatic breakthrough that would help curb soaring global food prices by restoring Ukrainian grain shipments to pre-war levels of five million tonnes a month.

But Zelenskiy’s economic adviser, Oleh Ustenko, told Ukrainian television the strike “indicates that it will definitely not work like that”.

He said Ukraine could export 60 million tonnes of grain during the next nine months, but it would take up to 24 months if its ports’ operations were disrupted.

There was no sign of a let-up in the fighting on Monday as Russia announced plans to investigate war crimes it claims have been committed by Ukrainian forces. 

The Ukrainian military reported widespread Russian shelling and again referred to Russian operations paving the way for an assault on Bakhmut in the eastern Donbas region.

The military said the Russians carried out air strikes near the Vuhlehirsk power plant, 50 kilometres northeast of Donetsk.

While the main theatre of combat has been the Donbas, Ukraine’s military reported progress in a counteroffensive in the occupied eastern Black Sea region of Kherson, where their forces have moved within firing range of Russian targets. 

Moscow had charged 92 members of Ukrainian armed forces with crimes against humanity and proposed a new international tribunal that would handle the investigation, Alexander Bastrykin, the head of Russia’s investigative committee, said in remarks published overnight.

The announcement came after the United States and more than 40 other countries agreed on July 14 to co-ordinate investigations into suspected war crimes in Ukraine, mostly concerning alleged actions by Russian forces and their proxies.

The strikes on Odesa drew condemnation from the United Nations, the European Union, the United States, Britain, Germany and Italy.

Russian news agencies quoted Russia’s defence ministry as saying a Ukrainian warship and US supplied anti-ship missiles were destroyed.

Friday’s deal aims to allow safe passage in and out of Ukrainian ports, blocked by Russia’s Black Sea fleet since Moscow’s February 24 invasion, in what one UN official called a “de facto ceasefire” for the ships and facilities covered.

Ukraine and Russia are major global wheat exporters and the blockade has trapped tens of millions of tonnes of grain, worsening global supply chain bottlenecks.

Along with Western sanctions on Russia, it has stoked food and energy price inflation, driving some 47 million people into “acute hunger”, according to the World Food Programme.

Moscow denies responsibility for the food crisis, blaming the sanctions for slowing its food and fertiliser exports and Ukraine for mining the approaches to its ports.

Ukraine has mined waters near its ports as part of its war defences but under Friday’s deal pilots will guide ships along safe channels.

Putin calls the war a “special military operation” aimed at demilitarising Ukraine and rooting out dangerous nationalists. 

Kyiv and the West call this a baseless pretext for an aggressive land grab.

By Natalia Zinets and Max Hunder in KYIV

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