Two individuals were hospitalized after a 3½-hour onslaught of Russian drones on a port in Ukraine’s Odesa region on Sunday, according to officials. The attack occurred just before Russian President Vladimir Putin was scheduled to meet with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss the resumption of food shipments from Ukraine under a Black Sea grain agreement that Moscow terminated in July. The Ukrainian air force stated that Russian forces fired 25 Iranian-made Shahed drones along the Danube River, with 22 of them being shot down by air defenses. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, described the assault as part of Russia’s attempt to “provoke a food crisis and hunger in the world.” Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed that the attack targeted fuel storage facilities used for military equipment. The meeting between Putin and Erdogan is set to take place in Sochi on Monday and will likely include a discussion on renewing the Black Sea grain initiative. The deal, brokered in July 2022, had allowed for the safe export of millions of metric tons of grain from Ukrainian ports despite the ongoing conflict with Russia. However, Russia withdrew from the agreement, citing unmet promises regarding the removal of obstacles to its own agricultural trade. The summit in Sochi follows recent talks between Russian and Turkish foreign ministers, during which Russia presented a list of actions that the West must take for Ukraine’s Black Sea exports to resume. Erdogan has expressed sympathy for Putin’s position, emphasizing the importance of Western countries taking action to address Russia’s concerns. In a separate incident, two people were killed and two others wounded during Russian shelling in the village of Vuhledar, while artillery fire targeted eight settlements in the Donetsk area. Ukrainian prosecutors have opened a war crimes investigation into the death of a police officer killed by Russian shelling in Seredyna-Buda, with two additional police officers and one civilian injured in the attack.
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