According to Ankara, a first ship loaded with grain could leave the port on Monday
The Turkish President’s spokesman said there was a “high probability” that a first ship carrying Ukrainian grain could leave the port of Odessa, Ukraine, on Monday morning, under the terms of the deal reached with Russia on July 22. “Preparations have reached a point that would allow ships to leave the port of Odessa. The ships are loaded, they are ready to go, but there needs to be good logistical coordination,” he added.
Known grain pair killed in Mykolaiv
They are Oleksiï Vadatoursky, 74, owner of Ukraine’s main grain logistics company Niboulon, and his wife Raïssa Vadatourska, who Ukrainian authorities said were at home at the time of the strikes. As a millionaire, in 2021 the entrepreneur was the 24th richest Ukrainian on the list of Forbes magazine. Before the war, his company exported grain to 70 countries.
Russia wants to strengthen its positions in the Arctic
Russia wants to strengthen its positions in the Arctic economically and militarily, according to a new Russian naval doctrine signed by Vladimir Putin this Sunday to mark Russian Fleet Day. According to this doctrine, the Arctic is in the process of “transforming itself into a region of international competition”. Russia will strengthen “its leading positions in exploration and conquest of the Arctic” and its mineral deposits, and ensure its “strategic stability” in the region by strengthening the military potential of Russia’s Northern and Pacific Fleets, the document specifies.
Heavy bombardment of Mykolayiv in the south
The city of Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine has been the target of massive Russian bombing, likely “the heaviest” since the war began in February, which killed two, authorities said on Sunday.
“Mykolayiv was heavily shelled today. Probably the strongest so far,” the city’s mayor, Oleksandr Senkevych, wrote on Telegram, noting that “powerful explosions” could be heard twice overnight from Saturday to Sunday.
The region’s governor, Vitali Kim, reported two deaths, some civilians, in these strikes. Other strikes hit Kharkiv (east) and Sumy (northeast) regions.
The Russian fleet will acquire a new hypersonic missile, Putin announces
The Russian fleet will “in the coming months” acquire a new Zircon hypersonic cruise missile that “knows no obstacles,” President Vladimir Putin announced on Sunday. The Russian fleet “is capable of inflicting a lightning reaction on anyone who decides to undermine our sovereignty and freedom,” he assured during a naval parade in Saint Petersburg (north-west), stressing “that their delivery to the Russian Armed Forces will begin in the coming months”.
Ukraine denies attacking Russian fleet in Crimea
Ukraine on Sunday denied a drone attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Crimea, in which six people were injured, Moscow said, calling the Russian allegations a “premeditated provocation”.
Russian allegations of a “so-called Ukrainian attack on the headquarters of the Russian fleet in Sevastopol” are “a deliberate provocation,” Odessa regional administration spokesman Sergii Brachuk said in an explanatory video on Telegram. “The liberation of Ukrainian-occupied Crimea will be done in a different, much more efficient way,” he added.
A summer in Cyprus without Russian tourists
In Ayia Napa, a popular seaside resort in Cyprus, the partying resumed but without the influx of Russian tourists, once the second largest contingent of visitors after the British, a void difficult to fill. “This year we expected 800,000 Russian tourists” (like in 2019), Haris Loizides, head of the Cyprus Hotel Association, told AFP. A threshold that can no longer be reached, because according to official statistics, only 17,000 Russian tourists came to the Mediterranean island in the first six months of the year.
The Russian market was “wiped out overnight” following EU sanctions after Moscow invaded Ukraine, says Christos Angelidis, president of the Pancyprian Association of Hotel Managers.
Nicosia and Moscow have close political and cultural ties, but when Russia sent troops to Ukraine, the Cypriot parliament unanimously passed a resolution condemning the invasion.
Celebrations in Crimea canceled
All celebrations related to the Day of the Russian Fleet “have been canceled for security reasons,” Sevastopol Governor M. Razvojayev said after the drone strike. Extensive celebrations are planned across Russia to mark the holiday, including a naval parade in Saint Petersburg (northwest) led by President Vladimir Putin.
Drone attack on Russian Black Sea Fleet personnel in Crimea, five wounded
A drone strike on Sunday targeted the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, wounding five, said the governor of that city on the annexed Crimea peninsula, Mikhail Razvojayev. “This morning Ukrainian nationalists decided to spoil for us the Russian Fleet Day”, which will be celebrated in Russia this Sunday, Mr. Razvojayev wrote on Telegram. He specified that a drone landed in the fleet staff yard and reported five injured among staff members.
Zelensky calls for the evacuation of the Donetsk region
In a video speech on Saturday evening, the Ukrainian President called on the population to evacuate the Donetsk region in the east of the country, whose cities are the target of bomb attacks by Russian armed forces. “A government decision has been made on mandatory evacuation of Donetsk region (…) Please evacuate,” he added. “At this stage of the war, terror is Russia’s main weapon. »
France condemns the treatment of Ukrainian prisoners
“France expresses its horror at the reports of assassinations and torture against Ukrainian prisoners of war in the detention center of Olenivka (Ukrainian town in Donbass, editor’s note), which is under the protection of the Russian Federation,” said the Quai d’Orsay said in a statement on Saturday. It would be the prison where the fighters of the Azov regiment, the defenders of Mariupol, are being held.