KYIV: Ships carrying grain sailed from Ukrainian ports on Monday despite Moscow’s suspension of its participation in a UN program to ensure the safety of such cargoes amid an unrelenting war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country would continue implementing the program, brokered by the United Nations and Turkiye in July and aimed at keeping the supply of food commodities to world markets flowing.
“We understand what we offer the world. We offer stability on the food production market,” Zelensky told a news conference.
But Moscow said it was “unacceptable” for shipping to pass through a Black Sea security corridor as Ukraine was using it to conduct military operations against Russia.
The Russian defense ministry said it could not guarantee security in the area until the Kyiv agreed not to use the route for military purposes — an accusation Ukraine denies.
However, the ministry did not say what Russia would do if ships continued to sail the route. It stressed that Russia was not withdrawing from the deal but only suspending it.
Moscow announced the suspension on Saturday after what it said was a Ukrainian drone attack on its Black Sea fleet.
Meanwhile on the 250th day of a war that has ground on since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Russian missiles rained down across the country. Explosions boomed out in Kyiv, sending black smoke into the sky.
Ukrainian officials said energy infrastructure was hit including at hydro-electric dams, knocking out power, heat and water supplies.
Ukraine’s military said it had shot down 44 of 50 Russian missiles. But strikes left 80 percent of Kyiv without running water, authorities said. Ukrainian police said 13 people were injured in the latest attacks.
“Food must flow”
Still, the resumption of food exports from Ukrainian ports suggested that the prospect of rising world hunger had been averted for now. International officials had feared that Moscow would reimpose a blockade on Ukrainian grain.
Earlier on Monday, Amir Abdullah, the UN official who coordinates the program, said in a Tweet: “Civilian cargo ships can never be a military target or held hostage. The food must flow.”
Shortly afterwards, Ukraine confirmed that 12 ships had set sail. The 354,500 tons of grain they carried was the most in a day since the program began.
Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, in a phone call with his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu, said it was very important for the grain deal to continue, the Turkish defense ministry said.
Missile strikes
Russia’s missile strikes during the Monday morning rush hour repeated a tactic it has pursued this month of targeting Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, especially power stations.
The US ambassador to Kyiv, Bridget Brink, tweeted: “Like millions of Ukrainians, our @USEmbassyKyiv team is once again taking shelter as Russia continues its callous and barbaric missile strikes on the people of Ukraine in an effort to leave the country cold and dark as we approach winter.”
For the past three weeks, Russia has attacked Ukrainian civil infrastructure using expensive long-range missiles and cheap Iranian-made “suicide drones” that fly at a target and detonate.
Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said 18 targets, mostly energy infrastructure, were hit in missile and drone strikes on 10 Ukrainian regions on Monday.
In Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, the strikes had caused a blackout that left trolleybus driver Ihor Polovikov stranded in his electric cable-powered vehicle.
He was fed up, he said, adding: “But nobody will give up just like that. We got used to it, it’s the ninth month. Everyone has understood that this is necessary.”
“Blackmailing the world”
Moscow said it was forced to pull out of the Black Sea grain shipping deal after blaming Kyiv for blasts that damaged Russian navy ships in the Crimean port of Sevastopol on Saturday.
Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied it was behind the explosions that hit the Crimea base of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, but says Russia’s navy is a legitimate military target. Moscow said the blasts were caused by a wave of sea and air drones.
After Russia suspended its participation in the grain shipping program, the United States accused Russia of using food as a weapon. President Zelensky said Moscow was “blackmailing the world with hunger.” Russia denies that is its aim.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the UN-brokered deal was “hardly feasible” since Russia could no longer guarantee the safety of shipping.
Ukraine and Russia are both among the world’s largest exporters of food. For three months, the UN-backed deal has guaranteed Ukrainian exports can reach markets, lifting a Russian de facto blockade. The news that Moscow was pulling out of the deal had sent global wheat prices soaring by more than 5 percent on Monday morning.
The ships that sailed on Monday included one hired by the UN World Food Programme to bring 40,000 tons of grain to drought-hit Africa.
Also on Monday, the Russian Defense Ministry said Moscow had completed the partial military mobilization announced by President Vladimir Putin in September and no further call-up notices would be issued.
Putin announced Russia’s first mobilization since World War Two on Sept. 21, one of a series of escalatory measures in response to Ukrainian gains on the battlefield.
Defense Minister Shoigu said at the time that some 300,000 additional personnel would be drafted. But the mobilization has proceeded chaotically and thousands have fled Russia to avoid being drafted.
Grain ships sail from Ukraine ports as Russian missiles knock out power across country
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Grain ships sail from Ukraine ports as Russian missiles knock out power across country
- For the past three weeks, Russia has attacked Ukrainian civil infrastructure using expensive long-range missiles and cheap Iranian-made “suicide drones”
- Shmyhal said 18 targets, mostly energy infrastructure, were hit in missile and drone strikes on 10 Ukrainian regions
Trump warns Maduro against playing ‘tough’ as US escalates pressure campaign on Venezuela
- Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Monday fired back at Donald Trump, who has ordered US naval forces to blockade the South American country's oil wealth, saying the US president would be "better off" focusing on domestic issues rather than threatenin
- The Defense Department, under Trump’s orders, continues its campaign of attacks on smaller vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean that it alleges are carrying drugs to the United States and beyond
WEST PALM BEACH, Florida: President Donald Trump on Monday delivered a new warning to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as the US Coast Guard steps up efforts to interdict oil tankers in the Caribbean Sea as part of the Republican administration’s escalating pressure campaign on the government in Caracas.
Trump was surrounded by his top national security aides, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as he suggested that he remains ready to further escalate his four-month pressure campaign on the Maduro government, which began with the stated purpose of stemming the flow of illegal drugs from the South American nation but has developed into something more amorphous.
“If he wants to do something, if he plays tough, it’ll be the last time he’ll ever be able to play tough,” Trump said of Maduro as he took a break from his Florida holiday vacation to announce plans for the Navy to build a new, large warship.
Trump levied his latest threat as the US Coast Guard on Monday continued for a second day to chase a sanctioned oil tanker that the Trump administration describes as part of a “dark fleet” Venezuela is using to evade US sanctions. The tanker, according to the White House, is flying under a false flag and is under a US judicial seizure order.
“It’s moving along and we’ll end up getting it,” Trump said.
It is the third tanker pursued by the Coast Guard, which on Saturday seized a Panama-flagged vessel called Centuries that US officials said was part of the Venezuelan shadow fleet.
The Coast Guard, with assistance from the Navy, seized a sanctioned tanker called Skipper on Dec. 10, also part of the shadow fleet of tankers that the US says operates on the fringes of the law to move sanctioned cargo. That ship was registered in Panama.
Trump, after that first seizure, said the US would carry out a “blockade” of Venezuela. Trump has repeatedly said that Maduro’s days in power are numbered.
Last week, Trump demanded that Venezuela return assets that it seized from US oil companies years ago, justifying anew his announcement of a blockade against sanctioned oil tankers traveling to or from the South American country.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose agency oversees the Coast Guard, said in a Monday appearance on “Fox & Friends” that the targeting of tankers is intended to send “a message around the world that the illegal activity that Maduro is participating in cannot stand, he needs to be gone, and that we will stand up for our people.”
Russian diplomats evacuate families from Caracas
Meanwhile, Russia’s Foreign Ministry started evacuating the families of diplomats from Venezuela, according to a European intelligence official speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.
The official told The Associated Press the evacuations include women and children and began on Friday, adding that Russian Foreign Ministry officials are assessing the situation in Venezuela in “very grim tones.” The ministry said in an X posting that it was not evacuating the embassy but did not address queries about whether it was evacuating the families of diplomats.
Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Yván Gil on Monday said he spoke by phone with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, who he said expressed Russia’s support for Venezuela against Trump’s declared blockade of sanctioned oil tankers.
“We reviewed the aggressions and flagrant violations of international law that have been committed in the Caribbean: attacks against vessels and extrajudicial executions, and the unlawful acts of piracy carried out by the United States government,” Gil said in a statement.
The scene on a Venezuelan beach near a refinery
While US forces targeted the vessels in international waters over the weekend, a tanker that’s considered part of the shadow fleet was spotted moving between Venezuelan refineries, including one about three hours west of the capital, Caracas.
The tanker remained at the refinery in El Palito through Sunday, when families went to the town’s beach to relax with children now on break from school.
Music played on loudspeakers as people swam and surfed with the tanker in the background. Families and groups of teenagers enjoyed themselves, but Manuel Salazar, who has parked cars at the beach for more than three decades, noticed differences from years past, when the country’s oil-dependent economy was in better shape and the energy industry produced at least double the current 1 million barrels per day.
“Up to nine or 10 tankers would wait out there in the bay. One would leave, another would come in,” Salazar, 68, said. “Now, look, one.”
The tanker in El Palito has been identified by Transparencia Venezuela, an independent watchdog promoting government accountability, to be part of the shadow fleet.
Area residents on Sunday recalled when tankers would sound their horns at midnight New Year’s Eve, while some would even send up fireworks to celebrate the holiday.
“Before, during vacations, they’d have barbecues; now all you see is bread with bologna,” Salazar said of Venezuelan families spending the holiday at the beach next to the refinery. “Things are expensive. Food prices keep going up and up every day.”
Venezuela’s ruling party-controlled National Assembly on Monday gave initial approval to a measure that would criminalize a broad range of activities that could be linked to the seizure of oil tankers.
Lawmaker Giuseppe Alessandrello, who introduced the bill, said people could be fined and imprisoned for up to 20 years for promoting, requesting, supporting, financing or participating in “acts of piracy, blockades or other international illegal acts against” commercial entities operating with the South American country.
The Defense Department, under Trump’s orders, continues its campaign of attacks on smaller vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean that it alleges are carrying drugs to the United States and beyond.
At least 104 people have been killed in 28 known strikes since early September. The strikes have faced scrutiny from US lawmakers and human rights activists, who say the administration has offered scant evidence that its targets are indeed drug smugglers and that the fatal strikes amount to extrajudicial killings.
