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Romania’s president has condemned Russia’s attacks on ports on the Danube as unacceptable and war crimes.
On Wednesday morning, Russia attacked Ukrainian grain ports at Izmail on the River Danube, a short distance from Romania. A grain warehouse, a passenger building and an elevator for loading grain were damaged, the BBC reported. No casualties were reported.
The attacks were “unacceptable,” Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said on social media. “These are war crimes and they further affect UA’s [Ukraine’s] capacity to transfer their food products towards those in need in the world.”
“The world must respond. When civilian ports are targeted, when terrorists deliberately destroy even grain elevators, it is a threat to everyone on all continents. Russia can and must be stopped,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Telegram.
Russia has launched a series of air strikes against the Danube riverports after pulling out last month from a U.N.-brokered deal that had allowed Ukraine to export 33 million metric tons of grains and oilseeds over the past 12 months.
Moscow also warned that it would treat civilian shipping as “potential carriers of military cargo” — although merchant vessels have continued to ply the Danube that is Ukraine’s best remaining route to the outside world now that its main Black Sea ports are shut in.
Chicago wheat futures jumped by 4 percent following the attacks on Wednesday before easing back to trade 1.3 percent higher, with Black Sea grains analyst Andrey Sizov saying the latest strikes appeared to have inflicted “serious damage” at Izmail.
“Ukrainian grain has the potential to feed millions of people worldwide. However, russia chose the path of killing, starvation, and terrorism, ” Ukraine’s ministry of defence said on Twitter.
