Putin “open” to negotiating grain deal after new attack on Ukrainian port

Russian President Vladimir Putin assured this Monday that he is willing to reactivate the agreement on cereals with Ukraine, just hours after the Russian army bombed Ukrainian agricultural infrastructure in a river port on the Danube.

“We will do it when the agreements on restrictions on exports of Russian agricultural products are applied”, Putin declared during a press conference with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in Sochi, on Russia’s Black Sea coast.

During that same appearance, erdoğan stated that his country has done “new proposals” to reactivate the agreement on the export of Ukrainian cereals through the Black Sea, reached in the summer of 2022 through the mediation of Turkey and the UN and which was suspended in July by Russia.

While, USA warned on Monday that the North Korean leader, kim jong unhopes to travel to Russia to discuss with Putin the sale of arms to Moscow for its war in Ukraine.

“As we have publicly warned, arms negotiations between Russia and the DPRK (North Korea) are actively advancingsaid National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson, using an acronym for North Korea.

“We have information that Kim Jong Un expects these discussions to continue to include diplomatic engagement at the leadership level in Russia.”.

The agreement on the export of grains had a parallel agreement so that Russia could sell its products, whose shipments are harmed by Western sanctions against Moscow, and the Kremlin awaits concrete proposals to return to stick to the pact.

However, putin and erdoğan They did not make more concrete announcements about a reactivation of the cereal pact in the coming weeks, which would allow the export of autumn crops from Ukraine, one of the largest exporters of grains and oil in the world and on which the world food market depends.

“Today we have witnessed a new confirmation that any ‘negotiation’ with #Putin is misleading and useless… He clearly lives in his own reality, in that ‘everyone is responsible except him’”, assured Mikhailo Podoliak, one of the main advisers of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

Tensions in the Black Sea

On the front lines, Ukrainian authorities reported renewed Russian shelling of agricultural and industrial infrastructure in Izmail in the southwest, home to a Danube river port that is key to Ukrainian exports.

kyiv claimed it shot down 23 Russian-launched drones in the south and southeast.

Oleg Kiper, the governor of the Odessa region in the south, reported that “in various locations in the Izmail district there was damage to warehouses and factory buildings, agricultural machinery and industrial enterprises”, no casualties.

The river port of Izmail has become the main route for Ukrainian exports after Russia withdrew from the Black Sea deal.

The Ukrainian military reported that Russia used Iranian-made Shahed drones in the night attack that they described as “massive” and said that “was directed against the civilian infrastructure of the Danube area”.

Russia claimed on Monday that it destroyed four Ukrainian speedboats carrying soldiers in the Black Sea, after Russian forces claimed on August 30 that they vandalized Kiev special forces vessels.

Russian authorities claimed the boats were traveling in the direction of Cape Tarjankut, west of the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Moscow in 2014.

Moscow also denounced on Monday that it repelled Ukrainian drone bombings, one near the Crimean peninsula, and another in Kursk, a southern Russian region near the border with Ukraine.

In the advance of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, Kiev claimed on Monday that its troops had made limited progress on the southern front, where it concentrated its operation to repel Russian forces, and that it also recovered territory near Bakhmut, a town in the east, devastated by the fighting and which Russia managed to take in May after fierce fighting.

In the Ukrainian capital, the authorities announced that they received a new bomb alert against all schools in Kiev, three days after a first threat, which turned out to be false, on September 1, the date the school year began.

The local kyiv police indicated in the afternoon that “had received information“on the possible presence of explosives”in all shopping and leisure centers” From the capital.

Source: AFP