[Source: Reuters]

Russia struck Ukrainian ports a day after pulling out of a U.N.-backed deal for safe Black Sea grain exports, and Moscow and Kyiv gave vastly different accounts of fighting in northeastern Ukraine.

Russia said it hit fuel storage in Odesa and a plant making seaborne drones there, as part of “mass revenge strikes” for attacks by Ukraine that knocked out its road bridge to the occupied Crimean Peninsula.

Shortly after the bridge was hit on Monday, Moscow withdrew from the year-old grain agreement, a move the United Nations said risked creating hunger around the world.

At the United Nations on Tuesday, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said there were a “number of ideas being floated” to help get Ukrainian and Russian grain and fertilizer to global markets. Moscow’s decision raised concern primarily in Africa and Asia of rising food prices and hunger.

The Black Sea deal was brokered by the U.N. and Turkey in July last year to combat a global food crisis worsened by Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine and its blockade of Ukrainian ports. The two countries are among the world’s top grain exporters.

For Ukraine’s part, “we are fighting for global security and for our Ukrainian farmer” and working on options to keep commitments on food supply, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.

Moscow spurned calls from Ukraine to allow shipping to resume without Russian participation, with the Kremlin openly saying ships entering the area without its guarantees would be in danger.

Russia says it could return to the grain deal, but only if its demands are met for rules to be eased for its own exports of food and fertiliser. Western countries call that an attempt to use leverage over food supplies to force a weakening in financial sanctions, which already allow Russia to sell food.

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