Following a missile assault that raised questions about whether Russia would uphold a deal intended to lessen the impact of the war’s food shortages on the world food supply, Ukraine moved on on July 24 with plans to resume grain shipments from Odesa and other Black Sea ports.
The attacks on Odesa, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, were plain acts of “barbarism” that proved Moscow could not be trusted to carry out the agreement reached on Friday and brokered by Turkey and the UN.
However, a government minister stated that plans were already in motion to begin grain exports. The Ukrainian military, according to public station Suspilne, said that the port had not been substantially harmed by the missiles.
On July 24, Russia claimed that its soldiers had fired missiles against a Ukrainian military boat near Odessa. The agreement reached by Moscow and Kyiv was hailed as a diplomatic success that would help lower the skyrocketing prices of food throughout the world, but on July 24, as the war entered its sixth month, there was still no evidence of a cease-fire.
President Zelenskiy stated in a video aired late on July 23 that Ukrainian forces were marching “step by step” towards the captured eastern Black Sea province of Kherson, even though the major theater of conflict has been the region of Donbas to the east.