Day after bridge attack, Russia strikes 2 Ukrainian port cities

MOSCOW, July 18

Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Tuesday it had hit military targets in two Ukrainian port cities overnight as “a mass revenge strike” in response to an attack on the Crimean bridge the previous day, which it blamed on Kyiv.

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov discussed with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan ways of exporting Russian grain via routes “that would not be susceptible to Kyiv and the West’s sabotage”, Russia’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday. A year-old deal to permit Ukraine to export grain from its Black Sea ports despite Russia’s war in Ukraine has lapsed after Russia suspended its participation. Reuters

The ministry said it had struck Odesa, where the Ukrainian navy has its headquarters, and Mykolaiv, near Ukraine’s Black Sea coast.

“The armed forces of the Russian Federation carried out a mass retaliatory strike overnight using precision sea-based weapons against facilities where terrorist acts against the Russian Federation were being prepared using uncrewed boats,” the ministry said in a statement.

It said it had struck a ship repair plant near Odesa, where such boats — thought to be naval drones of the kind Russia believes were used to attack the Crimean bridge — were being built.

“In addition, storage facilities holding around 70,000 tonnes of fuel used to supply the Ukrainian military equipment were destroyed near the cities of Mykolaiv and Odesa,” it said. It said all targets had been struck and destroyed, citing fires and detonations as evidence.

Ukraine’s air force said earlier that six Kalibr cruise missiles and 31 out of 36 drones had been shot down, mostly over the coastal Odesa and Mykolaiv regions in the south.

A Russian couple was killed and their 14-year-old daughter wounded on Monday in what Moscow said was a Ukrainian attack that knocked out the road part of the bridge linking Russia to Crimea, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Kyiv has not claimed responsibility for the attack. — Reuters

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