(Reuters) <\/p>\n\n\n\n
KYIV, July 23 – Shipowners halted vessel arrivals at Ukraine’s Black Sea ports due to \u200cintensified Russian strikes, Kyiv said, as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned Moscow might escalate attacks in order to block the country’s main corridor for grain exports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In recent weeks, Russia has pummelled logistics and port infrastructure in the southern Odesa region with missiles and drones. On \u200bSunday, a missile strike<\/a> on a ship carrying corn killed 10 people, mostly foreigners, Ukrainian officials said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Yesterday… \u200bnot a single ship entered the port,” Zelenskiy told reporters on Thursday. “They’ve been hitting all \u2060the ships. They’re going to step this up.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Russia struck 28 civilian vessels and killed 21 people from June \u200b20 to July 20, according to Odesa regional prosecutors cited by local media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shipowners \u2014 wary of the attacks \u2014 have temporarily suspended \u200bvessel arrivals meant to pick up agricultural products at the ports, Ukraine’s agriculture minister Taras Vysotskyi said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Ukraine, as a state, has not imposed any restrictions,” Vysotskyi was cited as saying by Interfax-Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The suspension reflects a rapidly deteriorating situation for Ukraine’s port \u200blogistics and export capacity, key for an economy that has been ravaged by Russia’s war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As of last week, \u200bUkraine, a major agricultural producer, has lost about a third of its capacity to export grain via the Black Sea ports \u200cdue to \u2060strikes, traders and analysts<\/a> have said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n