Grain tycoon killed in Russian strikes
Natalia Zinets |
Heavy Russian strikes have hit the southern Ukrainian port city of Mykolaiv, killing the owner of one of the country’s largest grain exporters, while Russia says a Ukrainian drone struck its Black Sea fleet headquarters in Sevastopol.
Oleksiy Vadatursky, founder and owner of agriculture company Nibulon, and his wife were killed in their home early on Sunday, Mykolaiv Governor Vitaliy Kim said on Telegram.
Headquartered in Mykolaiv, a strategically important city that borders the mostly Russia-occupied Kherson region, Nibulon specialises in the production and export of wheat, barley and corn, and has its own fleet and shipyard.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy described Vadatursky’s death as “a great loss for all of Ukraine”, saying the businessman had been building a modern grain market involving a network of transhipment terminals and elevators.
“It is these people, these companies, precisely the south of Ukraine, which has guaranteed the world’s food security,” Zelenskiy said later in his nightly address.
“This was always so. And it will be so once again.”
Three people were also wounded in the attacks on Mikolaiv, the city’s Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych told Ukrainian television, adding 12 missiles hit homes and educational facilities.
He earlier described the strikes as “probably the most powerful” on the city of the entire five-month-old war.
Up to 50 Grad rockets hit residential areas in the southern city of Nikopol on Sunday morning, Dnipropetrovsk Governor Valentyn Reznichenko wrote on Telegram. One person was wounded.
Ukrainian forces hit Russia’s Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Russian-held Sevastopol early on Sunday, the Crimean port city’s governor Mikhail Razvozhayev told Russian media.
Five staff members were wounded in the attack when what was presumed to be a drone flew into the courtyard at the headquarters, he said, adding Ukraine had decided to “spoil Navy Day for us”.
The Sevastopol attack coincided with Russia’s Navy Day, which President Vladimir Putin marked by announcing the navy would receive what he called “formidable” hypersonic Zircon cruise missiles in coming months.
Putin sent tens of thousands of troops over the border on February 24, setting off a conflict that has killed thousands, uprooted millions and deeply strained relations between Russia and the West.
The conflict has also stoked an energy and food crisis that is shaking the global economy. Both Ukraine and Russia are leading suppliers of grain.
Zelenskiy said on Sunday the country might harvest only half its usual amount this year due to the invasion.
“Our main goal: to prevent global food crisis caused by Russian invasion. Still grains find a way to be delivered alternatively,” Zelenskiy wrote on Twitter.
Ukraine has struggled to get its product to buyers via its Black Sea ports because of the war.
But an agreement arranged by the United Nations and Turkey on July 22 provides for safe passage for ships carrying grain out of three southern Ukrainian ports.
There was a high possibility the first grain-exporting ship would leave Ukraine’s ports on Monday, a spokesperson for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.
Zelenskiy said Russia had been transferring some forces from the eastern Donbas region to the southern Kherson and Zaporizhizhya regions.
But Zelenskiy said on Saturday that hundreds of thousands of people were still exposed to fierce fighting in the Donbas region, which contains Donetsk and Luhansk provinces and which Russia seeks to control completely.
Swathes of the Donbas were held before the invasion by Russian-backed separatists.
Russia said on Sunday it had invited UN and Red Cross experts to probe the deaths of dozens of Ukrainian prisoners held by Moscow-backed separatists.
Ukraine and Russia have traded accusations over a missile strike or explosion early on Friday that appeared to have killed the Ukrainian prisoners of war in the frontline town of Olenivka in eastern Donetsk.
The Russian defence ministry had published a list of 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war killed and 73 wounded in what it said was a Ukrainian military strike with US-made artillery.
Ukraine’s armed forces denied responsibility, saying Russian artillery had attacked the prison to hide mistreatment there.
Reuters
