Lang
Kyiv and a seed oil trader said on Saturday that Russia bombed sunflower oil storage facilities as part of continued strikes on Ukraine's Black Sea region of Odesa, now in their second consecutive day.
A series of intense Russian strikes has caused widespread destruction across the coastal region in recent weeks, targeting bridges and ports and cutting power and heating to thousands amid freezing temperatures.
Commenting on the attacks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said: "Russia is once again trying to restrict Ukraine's access to the sea and blockade our coastal regions." He added that he had ordered the swift rollout of "temporary infrastructure solutions so that people have all the resources they need".
Moscow had earlier said it would expand its strikes on Ukrainian ports in response to attacks on its oil tankers, which it uses to circumvent sanctions.
Cornelis Vrins, trading director at Allseeds, told AFP that "Ukraine's largest vegetable oil terminal, belonging to Allseeds Black Sea, was bombed in the early hours of Saturday" at the port of Pivdennyi, adding that one employee was killed and two others were injured.
The co-founder of one of Ukraine's largest seed oil trading companies said "thousands of tonnes of sunflower oil" were lost in the attack, which inflicted the company's worst damage since the start of the war.
With its vast agricultural sector, Ukraine is the world's leading producer of sunflower oil, according to analysts' estimates, and attacks on export infrastructure could disrupt markets and hamper state revenues.
Ukraine had announced on Friday that it struck another tanker from Russia's "shadow fleet", which is used to evade sanctions, in international waters of the Mediterranean Sea, its first such strike in that sea since the war began nearly four years ago. Kyiv had also targeted similar vessels in the Black Sea earlier this month.
Putin had said in early December that Russia would expand its strikes on Ukrainian ports and threatened to completely cut off its access to the sea if it continued attacking tankers. These attacks come amid intense diplomatic efforts to end the war, with Ukrainian, Russian and European officials meeting in Miami for another round of US-mediated talks.
Source: Al Mal Forum