The Ukrainian ports of Odessa, Chornomorsk and Yuzhny, all three designated for grain exports, resumed operation on Wednesday. The Ukrainian government expects the first shipments, notably of cereals, to be able to leave "this week" the Black Sea terminals, where they had been blocked since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, against a backdrop of soaring food prices around the world.
The Ukrainian army, for its part, partly destroyed a bridge of strategic importance in the southern region of Kherson, occupied by the Russians and which the forces of kyiv are seeking to retake. On the economic - and diplomatic - level, the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany is now only in service, as planned, at around a fifth of its capacity, increasing the risk of shortages this winter in Europe.
“The ports of Odessa, Chornomorsk and Yuzhny (Pivdenny, editor’s note) have resumed work,” the Ukrainian navy announced on Wednesday. “The exit and entry of ships to seaports will be done by forming a convoy that will accompany the lead ship,” she continued.
kyiv and Moscow reached an agreement on July 22 in Istanbul, via mediation by Turkey and under the aegis of the UN, to allow the delivery abroad of some 25 million tonnes of cereals stuck in the Ukrainian ports since the start of the Russian invasion. In application, here again, of the agreements signed between the two countries, the Joint Coordination Center (CCC) in charge of controlling the transport of Ukrainian grain was officially inaugurated the same day in this Turkish metropolis.
However, Ukrainian officials have repeated that they do not trust Moscow to ensure the security of the convoys. They recall the firing of Russian missiles on Saturday at the port of Odessa. The Kremlin, for its part, declared that it did not see any obstacles to the resumption of exports, also hampered by the presence of sea mines laid by Ukrainian forces to guard against a Russian amphibious assault. Demining will take place only "in the corridor necessary for exports", underlined kyiv.
Spanning the Dnieper in the suburbs of Kherson, the Antonovski bridge, key for supplies, was partially disabled on Wednesday by a Ukrainian attack. This work "is very damaged" and "the Russians do not have the specialists and the equipment to repair it in the short term", commented the deputy head of the regional council, Yuri Sobolevski. The latter also affirms that "the bridge cannot be used to cross heavy military equipment".
“Those who fired on the bridge just made life a little more difficult for the population,” said Kirill Stremoussov, a senior representative of the Russian occupation authorities. Kherson is located a few kilometers from the southern front where the Ukrainian forces launched a counter-offensive in order to reconquer these territories lost in the first days of the invasion. Essential for Ukrainian agriculture, the region is also strategic because it borders the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Moscow in 2014.
In eastern Ukraine, the Donbass mining basin remains the scene of intense fighting. Two people were killed and five others injured in the shelling of a hotel in Bakhmout, the Ukrainian emergency services announced. AFP journalists present in this city, one of the last in Donbass to remain under Ukrainian control, heard sporadic artillery fire and saw a house hit by a Russian shell. "I was in the barn and was about to get out. I heard a whistle. And I don't remember anything. It exploded and I was thrown into the barn" by the blast, testified Roman, 51 years old.
Another consequence of the Russian offensive, the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany is operating, as planned, at only about a fifth of its capacity. In the context of the energy standoff between Moscow and the West since the start of the conflict, the arrival of gas from Russia in Germany was, on Wednesday, some 14.4 gigawatt hours (GWh), against nearly 29 GWh in average in recent days, lamented the German operator Gascade, which manages the network on German territory.
The supply to Germany - particularly dependent on Russian gas - but also to other European countries via this pipe installed at the bottom of the Baltic Sea had already been reduced to 40% of normal in mid-June, before a complete shutdown for an annual maintenance between July 11 and 21.
On Monday, Gazprom said it would further halve its daily deliveries via Nord Stream, citing a maintenance operation on a turbine. A Kremlin spokesman said the next day that the reduction in speed was due to Western sanctions taken against Russia. But Europeans accuse Moscow of using gas as an economic and political weapon. Faced with the risk of a shortage, gas prices continued to rise. On Wednesday morning the Dutch TTF, the benchmark for natural gas in Europe, had risen by more than 9%. Since the start of the week, the TTF has jumped 35%.
On Wednesday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also assured that his country was preparing to increase its electricity exports to the European Union to help Europe "resist energy pressure" from Moscow. "Our exports allow us not only to increase our foreign exchange earnings, but also to help our partners resist Russian energy pressure. We will gradually make Ukraine a country that guarantees Europe's energy security" , he assured.
