Key Points
- Ukraine has sparked hopes for an increase in grain exports
- Ships have started to pass through an important river mouth
Ukraine has sparked hopes for an increase in grain exports despite Russia's blockade of Black Sea ports, noting ships had started to pass through an important mouth of the Danube river.
"In the last four days, 16 ships have passed through the Bystre rivermouth," Deputy Infrastructure Minister Yuriy Vaskov said in a ministry statement.
"We plan to maintain this pace."
The ministry said the 16 vessels were now waiting to be loaded with Ukrainian grain for export to foreign markets, while more than 90 more ships were awaiting their turn in Romania's Sulina canal.
Only four ships could be received per day along the Sulina route, he said, while a rate of eight per day was needed.
If such conditions were met, and with the opening of the Bystre, he said Ukraine expected this ship congestion would end within a week and monthly exports of grain could increase by 500,000 tonnes.
Before Russia's invasion, the ministry said, sea ports accounted for about 80 per cent of Ukraine's export of agricultural products, but food exports are now restricted to Danube ports, railways and roadways to the west.
The United Nations says Ukraine is one of the world's top five grain producing countries, and provides more than 45 million tonnes of grain a year to the world market.
Ukraine aims to recapture territories
On the battleground, Ukraine said on Tuesday it had carried out a long-range rocket strike against Russian forces and military equipment on southern territory it says it is planning to retake in a counter-offensive using hundreds of thousands of troops.
The strike hit an ammunition dump in the town of Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region and killed 52 people, Ukraine's military said.
The town's Russia-installed authorities gave a different version of events.
An official said Ukraine had used US-supplied HIMARS missiles and had destroyed warehouses containing saltpetre, a chemical compound that can be used to make fertiliser or gunpowder.
"There are still many people under the rubble. The injured are being taken to the hospital, but many people are blocked in their apartments and houses," Vladimir Leontyev, head of the Russia-installed Kakhovka District military-civilian administration, was quoted by Russia's TASS news agency as saying.
He said warehouses, shops, a pharmacy, petrol stations, and a church had been hit.
TASS reported seven people had been killed in the attack and around 70 injured.
The area Ukraine struck is of strategic importance with Black Sea access, a once-thriving agricultural industry, and a location just north of Russian-annexed Crimea.
Ukrainian government officials have spoken of efforts to marshal up to a million troops and of their aim to recapture southern parts of the country now under Russian control.
Russia has accused Ukraine of shelling its own people in territory where it has lost control.
Ukraine says it evacuates as many people as possible from areas seized by Russian forces in what it and the West have cast as an attempted imperial-style land grab by Moscow.
Kyiv and the West say Russia's own strikes have been indiscriminate, killing civilians and levelling city districts.
Moscow denies targeting civilians but many Ukrainian population centres have been left in ruins as Europe's biggest conflict since World War Two grinds towards the five-month mark.
The UN human rights office said on Tuesday that 5024 civilians had been killed in Ukraine since the invasion began, adding the real toll was likely to be much higher.
Bracing for new Russian offensive
Russia has tried to introduce the rouble currency in Kherson and is offering Russian passports to locals.
Russian-installed officials say they also plan to hold a referendum on the region becoming part of Russia but have not yet set a date.
Ukraine is itself bracing for what it expects will be a massive new Russian offensive in the east where Moscow says it is determined to take control of all of the industrial Donbas region.
Russian forces, which earlier this month completed the capture of Luhansk province in the Donbas, have for weeks been shelling parts of neighbouring Donetsk province.
Regional Donetsk governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said there was a significant buildup of Russian troops, particularly in the Bakhmut and Siversky areas, and around Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
The entire front line in the region was under constant shelling as Russian troops tried to break through but were being repelled, he said.
