Free Republic

Russian defense ministry officials on Sunday insisted that an airstrike on the port of Odesa — less than a day after Russia and Ukraine signed an agreement on resuming grain shipments from there — had hit only military targets. “In the seaport in the city of Odesa, on the territory of a shipyard, sea-based high-precision long-range missiles destroyed a docked Ukrainian warship and a warehouse with Harpoon anti-ship missiles supplied by the U.S. to the Kyiv regime,” ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said at a daily briefing. The Ukrainian military said on Saturday that Moscow had attacked Odesa’s sea port with...

Russia said Sunday that its missile barrage on a Ukrainian port key to a freshly-inked grain export deal had targeted military infrastructure at the facility, after the attack sparked an outcry from Ukraine and its allies. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced Saturday’s strike on the Odessa port — that came just one day after the warring sides struck a deal to resume exports blocked by the conflict — as “Russian barbarism”. Turkey helped broker the accord and said after the double cruise missile attacks that it had received assurances from Moscow that Russian forces were not responsible. But Russia’s foreign...