► Grain exports could resume this week
Ukraine said on Monday it expects to resume grain exports “starting this week” for the first time since the beginning of the war launched by Russia. This announcement comes after the signing of an agreement with Moscow and despite the bombardment on Saturday by the Russian army of the large port of Odessa, vital for this trade.
“We expect the agreement to start working in the next few days and we expect a coordination center to be set up in Istanbul in the next few days. We are preparing everything to start this week,” said Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov.
According to him, the main obstacle to the resumption of exports is the risk of Russian strikes, as illustrated by the strike that targeted the port of Odessa on the Black Sea in southern Ukraine on Saturday.
Moscow had assured earlier in the day that grain exports from Odessa could take place in accordance with the agreement signed under the aegis of the UN. The bombings “aim solely at military infrastructure. It is not at all related to the infrastructure used for the implementation of the grain export agreement, which is why it cannot and should not interfere with the start of the loading process,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. According to the Kremlin, weapons delivered by the United States as well as a warship were destroyed.
► “Turning of the situation” in Kherson, according to the Ukrainian authorities
The war in Ukraine knows no respite on the fronts of Mykolaiv (South), in the Kharkiv region (North-East), the second largest city of this country, in that of Kherson (South) and in the two territories pro-Russian separatists from Donetsk and Luhansk in the east, according to the Ukrainian presidency.
“Mykolaiv was again bombarded” Sunday morning after being targeted the night before by “four Kalibr-type cruise missiles”, which left five injured including a teenager and damaged several buildings, according to the Ukrainian authorities. Bombings were also recorded in the Kharkiv region, where “several residential buildings were damaged and residential buildings burned down”.
In the Kherson region, largely occupied by Russian troops, the Ukrainians claim to be stepping up their counter-attack. “We can talk about a turnaround on the ground. In recent operations, it was the Ukrainian Armed Forces that had the advantage,” assured the Ukrainian authorities on Sunday. They promise that the region “will be definitely liberated by September and that all the occupiers’ plans will fail”.
In this context, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on his compatriots on Sunday evening to “to be united and to work together for victory”before “celebrating for the first time the Day of Sovereignty of Ukraine, July 28”.
► The German president evokes a “war against the unity of Europe”
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier felt that the Russian war in Ukraine was also “a war against the unity of Europe”. “We must not allow ourselves to be divided, we must not allow the great work of a united Europe which we have begun so promising to be destroyed”, he launched.
North Korea, which has just officially recognized the two self-proclaimed pro-Russian separatist regions in eastern Ukraine, has for its part accused the Americans of manufacturing biological weapons in Ukraine, echoing an accusation already made by Moscow and rejected by the UN in March.
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