Russia moves to use the Ukraine grain exports resuming as a bargaining point for a cease fire and lifting of sanctions against them ….
This while Russia is firing missiles at Ukraine grain Wearhouse’s in Odessa….
Are there gonna be Black Sea Naval combat action?
(The Ukraine already sank one Russian warship)….
Wagner troops keep arriving in Belarus and Poland, a NATO member, moves troops to its border with Belarus….
US CIA Director says the Wagner leader probably won’t be welcomed back in Russia….
Cluster bombs ARE being used by Ukraine troops against the Russians….
In New York, senior U.N. officials also condemned Russia’s actions at a meeting of the U.N. Security Council, and the Russian representative laid out a list of seven conditions he said must be met before Moscow would be willing to rejoin a pact allowing Ukrainian grain to pass through the Black Sea. The demands included a lifting of sanctions on electronic banking transactions and the reopening of a pipeline that carries ammonia from Russia to Odesa.
“As soon as all of these conditions are met, we will immediately reach the deal,” Russia’s deputy ambassador to the U.N., Dmitry Polyanskiy, said.
Moscow has also warned that any ships sailing to Ukraine’s ports would be considered potentially hostile, raising concerns that it could attack civilian ships and sending grain prices soaring. Ukraine has made a similar threat.
On Friday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said that the crew of a missile boat had carried out combat training in the northwestern Black Sea, firing anti-ship cruise missiles and destroying a “mock target” vessel.
Here are other developments:
-
Russia fired missiles for the fourth straight day on Odesa, home to Ukraine’s busiest ports, injuring two people and destroying 100 tons of peas and 20 tons of barley, according to Oleg Kiper, the head of the regional military administration.
-
Russian investigators detained Igor Girkin, a former Russian intelligence officer who is a popular nationalist blogger and a sharp critic of Russia’s war effort, his wife said.
-
Russia’s central bank approved a higher-than-expected interest rate hike, a sign of rising concern over the effects of war spending and Western sanctions on the country’s financial stability.
-
Poland is moving military forces to its eastern border with Belarus after Minsk said its soldiers were being trained by Wagner mercenaries near there, a Polish defense official said. President Vladimir V. Putin lashed out at Poland and said that Russia would respond to “aggression” against Belarus, a key ally, “with all means at our disposal.”
-
The director of the C.I.A. offered a biting assessment of the damage done to Mr. Putin by the mutiny of the Wagner mercenary group, saying the rebellion had revived questions about the Russian leader’s judgment.
-
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said at a meeting of the U.N. Security Council that Russia was “simply using the Black Sea as blackmail” and “holding humanity hostage.” The Russian complaint that sanctions had blocked their own exports was false, she argued. “They are exporting more grains than ever before, and at higher prices,” she said…..
…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he planned to speak with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday evening about subjects including the Black Sea and food security.
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
Russia struck an agricultural facility in Odessa in the fourth day of pounding the port region, the Odessa governor said. The attack injured two employees and destroyed tons of peas and barley, Oleh Kiper added. The wave of attacks also comes after Moscow promised to retaliate for Kyiv’s strike on the Crimean Bridge earlier this week.
Two children were killed in a Russian artillery strike on a village in the Donetsk region: a boy born in 2013 and a girl born in 2007. In a statement on his website, Zelensky offered his condolences to the family and friends of the deceased.
Radar imagery collected Friday appears to show newly arrived vehicles and equipment at a rumored Wagner base in the village of Tsel in Belarus. The images, provided to The Washington Post by Maxar Technologies and Umbra, show “dozens, if not hundreds, of vehicles and equipment have recently arrived at the facility,” according to Stephen Wood, senior director at Maxar. Friday’s images show an increase in material compared to previous imagery gathered on July 16.
Russian authorities detained Igor Girkin, a former Russian commander in Ukraine and prominent war blogger, on Friday. The charge — reportedly “public calls for extremist activities” online — likely stems from Girkin’s loud criticism of Russian leaders and their military strategy, and comes despite his otherwise-fervent support of the war in Ukraine.
The CIA director suggested that Putin could still seek revenge on Wagner Group chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin over his short-lived mutiny. William J. Burns also commented on Russian Gen. Sergei Surovikin, who had good relations with the Wagner boss and whose whereabouts sparked rumors last month. “I don’t think he enjoys a lot of freedom right now,” Burns told NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly at the Aspen Security Forum, stopping short of saying Surovikin was in custody. Prigozhin appears to have accepted exile in Belarus, brokered by Lukashenko.
Tensions around maritime activity are simmering and the price of wheat futures has risen, though it has not reached its May 2022 high. Russia has said it considers ships en route to Ukrainian Black Sea ports to be involved in the conflict as of Thursday, and Ukraine respondedthat it would treat vessels headed toward Russian ports the same.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Kyiv’s use of cluster munitions weapons was “actually having an impact on Russia’s defensive formations” and Ukrainian forces were using them “effectively,” though the decision to send the widely banned munitions has met criticism from human rights groups. He made the comments after The Washington Post reported that Ukraine began using the U.S.-provided munitions in a bid to push through Russian lines in the southeast.
Zelensky called for limits on funding cultural activities during the war in his nightly address. The cultural minister, Oleksandr Tkachenko, announced his resignation, citing a “misunderstanding about the importance of culture during war” with the president.“Museums, cultural centers, symbols, TV series — all of this is important,” Zelensky said, “but now there are other priorities.”
A Russian naval ship fired cruise missiles at a target vessel and destroyed it as part of a Black Sea drill, the Defense Ministry said Friday. Russian warships and planes also practiced sealing off areas temporarily closed to shipments and seizing ships, it said.
Britain lifted sanctions on Oleg Tinkov, the former oligarch who founded Russia’s Tinkoff Bank but renounced his Russian citizenship months after the country’s invasion of Ukraine. “He spoke out against the war unambiguously, and this shows others in his position that they can do the same to potentially have sanctions lifted,” wrote Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the exiled Russian oligarch, in support of the decision on Twitter.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to meet with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on July 23 while Lukashenko is on a working visit to Russia, the Kremlin’s press service said Friday. Putin and Lukashenko “will continue to discuss relevant aspects of continued development of Russian-Belarusian relations of allied strategic partnership, as well as integration interaction within the Union State.”
Poland plans to move military formations from the west to the east of the country, citing the presence of the Wagner Group in neighboring Belarus, according to Polish national news agency PAP. “Training or joint exercises between the Belarusian army and the Wagner Group is undoubtedly a provocation,” it quoted the secretary of Poland’s security committee as saying.
Russia’s deputy defense minister held talks with his Iranian counterpart on military cooperation and exchanged “views on regional security and the international situation,” the Russian Defense Ministry said Friday.
Ukraine begins firing U.S.-provided cluster munitions at Russian forces: Ukrainian officials have said these munitions would make up for their disadvantage on the battlefield, although the cluster bombs are outlawed in more than 120 countries because of the threat to civilians, John Hudson and Isabelle Khurshudyan report.
Cluster munitions explode in the air over a target, dispersing smaller bomblets across a wide area. The submunitions can fail to explode on impact, potentially killing or injuring people long after a conflict ends…