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Russian drone and missile attacks have damaged 321 Ukrainian port infrastructure facilities since July last year, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said yesterday.
Twenty merchant ships belonging to other countries were also damaged by Russian strikes, he added.
“Overall, Ukrainian food exports provide food for 400 million people in 100 countries around the world,” Zelenskiy said. “Food prices in Egypt, Libya, Nigeria and other countries in Africa directly depend on whether farmers and agricultural companies in Ukraine can operate normally.”
Moscow has repeatedly denied that it attacks civilian targets.
Ukraine is a major global wheat and corn grower and before the Russian invasion it exported about six million tonnes of grain per month via the Black Sea.
When Russia launched its invasion in February 2022, it blockaded Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. Shipments were resumed in July 2022 under the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a deal mediated by the United Nations and Türkiye. But a year later Russia exited the agreement.
Since then, Ukraine has exported grain and other food products using its own corridor, which passes through the territorial waters of Romania, Bulgaria and Türkiye.
Ukraine’s grain exports in the 2024/25 July-June season totalled almost 16m metric tonnes by the middle of November, up from about 11m tonnes in the same period a year ago, data from traders and the government showed.
Ukraine’s grain exports in the 2023/24 marketing season rose to about 51m tonnes from 49.2m the previous year.
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