WESTERN PERSPECTIVE
Russia agreed Wednesday to rejoin a wartime agreement that allows Ukrainian grain and other commodities to be shipped to world markets. The U.N.’s refugee chief, meanwhile, put the number of Ukrainians driven from their homes since the Russian invasion eight months ago at around 14 million.
It is “the fastest, largest displacement witnessed in decades,” said Filippo Grandi, who heads the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
In announcing that Russia would rejoin the grain pact, President Vladimir Putin said Moscow had received assurances that Ukraine would not use the humanitarian corridors to attack Russian forces. He warned that Russia reserves the right to withdraw again if Kyiv breaks its word.
Putin praised Turkey’s mediation efforts to get the deal back on track, as well as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s “neutrality in the conflict as a whole” and his efforts at “ensuring the interest of the poorest countries.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he also thanked Erdogan on Wednesday, “for his active participation in maintaining the grain agreement, and his unwavering support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
Russia had suspended its participation in the grain deal over the weekend, citing an alleged drone attack against its Black Sea fleet in Crimea.
Ukraine did not claim responsibility for an attack, and Zelenskyy said Wednesday that Moscow’s return to the agreement showed “Russian blackmail did not lead to anything.”
Erdogan said shipments would resume Wednesday, prioritizing those to African nations, including Somalia, Djibouti and Sudan. That’s in line with Russia’s concerns that much of the exported grain had ended up in richer nations, since Moscow and Kyiv made separate agreements with Turkey and the U.N. in July.
U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said Monday that 23% of the cargo exported from Ukraine under the grain deal went to lower- or lower-middle-income countries, which also received 49% of all wheat shipments.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres hailed Russia’s announcement, and a spokesman said Guterres “remains committed to removing the remaining obstacles to the exports of Russian food and fertilizer.”
Ukraine and Russia are major global exporters of wheat, barley, sunflower oil and other food to developing countries. A loss of those supplies before the grain deal had pushed up global food prices, led to soaring energy costs, and helped throw tens of millions into poverty.
The July agreement brought down global food prices about 15% from their peak in March, according to the U.N. After the announcement Wednesday that Russia would rejoin the deal, wheat futures prices erased increases seen Monday, dropping more than 6% in Chicago.
Meanwhile, in Kyiv, the local power-grid operator said electricity had been restored after a wave of Russian drone and artillery strikes had targeted energy infrastructure. About 300,000 households reportedly got their power back, but local authorities called for controlled blackouts to reduce strain on the system.
Grandi, the U.N. refugee official, noted that Ukrainians are about to face “one of the world’s harshest winters in extremely difficult circumstances.”
He said those include the continuing destruction of civilian infrastructure, which is “quickly making the humanitarian response look like a drop in the ocean of needs.”
Grandi said the 14 million Ukrainian refugees had increased the overall number of displaced people worldwide to more than 103 million.
Power outages also were reported in the southern cities of Nikopol and Chervonohryhorivka after “a large-scale drone attack,” Dnipropetrovsk Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko said. The two cities lie across the Dnieper River from the huge Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
Russia and Ukraine have traded blame for months for shelling at and around the plant that the U.N.‘s nuclear watchdog warned could cause a radiation emergency. In a development easing some fears, Ukraine’s state nuclear company Energoatom, said the plant has been reconnected to the country’s power grid after shelling forced it to rely on generators to cool spent nuclear fuel.
The plant is held by Russian forces, but Ukrainian staff continues to run it.
The company also said Russian soldiers have cordoned off the plant’s spent nuclear-fuel storage facility and began unspecified construction there. “They don’t let anyone in, they don’t report anything,” the company said.
Russian shelling continued in southern and eastern Ukraine, causing at least four civilian deaths between Tuesday and Wednesday, according to Zelenskyy’s office.
“The epicenter of the fighting” was around the city of Bakhmut, neighboring Soledar and the wider Donetsk region, Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malya told Ukrainian TV. She said Ukrainian defenders around Bakhmut were facing a “very difficult” task.
“But the main thing is that Ukraine will not give up a single inch of land,” she said.
In southern Ukraine, Russian-installed authorities in the occupied Kherson region announced they were temporarily halting traffic across the wide Dnieper River, citing “increased military danger” as Kyiv’s forces edged closer to the region’s capital, the city of Kherson.
The move would also prevent civilians from crossing back into Ukrainian-held territory.
The Moscow-backed authorities have said they are relocating tens of thousands of civilians further into Russian-held territory in anticipation of the Ukrainian counterattack.
The province was overrun by Russian forces early in the war, and both sides have been girding for a major battle over it.
In another development, Belarus and Russia began preparations for large-scale joint military exercises. Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin didn’t specify the dates for the exercises, dubbed Union Shield-2023, or the number of troops that would take part.
Russia has previously used Belarus, an economically dependent ally, as a springboard to send troops and missiles into Ukraine. Kyiv fears that the Belarusian army will be directly drawn into the war, striking from the north where the countries share a 1,080-kilometer (671-mile) border.
On a visit to Kyiv on Wednesday, Spain’s Foreign Minister José Albares pledged a new military aid package to help Ukraine’s air defenses. Cambodia, meanwhile, agreed to send deminers to help train Ukrainians in clearing land mines.
RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE
Moscow is “strictly and consistently” guided by the principle that a nuclear war can never be won and should never be fought, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday, calling on other atomic powers to “demonstrate in practice” their own commitment to this.
“We firmly believe that in the current difficult and turbulent situation, a result of irresponsible and shameless actions aimed at undermining our national security, the first priority is to prevent any military clash of nuclear powers,” the ministry said.
Russia stands by its signature on the January 3 joint statement with leaders of the ‘Nuclear Five’ – which includes the US, UK, France and China – on the prevention of nuclear war and the unacceptability of a nuclear arms race.
The ministry also called on the other members of the ‘Nuclear Five’ to demonstrate in practice they also share this commitment, and to “abandon dangerous attempts to infringe on each other's vital interests, balancing on the brink of direct armed conflict and encouraging provocations with WMD, which can lead to catastrophic consequences.”
Russia has repeatedly warned the US and its allies that their overt aid to the government in Ukraine makes them parties to the conflict in Ukraine. Moscow has also publicly accused Kiev of “nuclear blackmail,” including an alleged plan to detonate a “dirty bomb” against its own citizens.
Addressing Western accusations that Russia has made threats to use atomic weapons in Ukraine, the Foreign Ministry said that the circumstances in which Moscow may resort to such weapons are “extremely clearly outlined, purely defensive in nature, and do not allow for broad interpretation.”
“Use of nuclear weapons by Russia is hypothetically allowed only in response to aggression carried out with the use of WMDs, or aggression with the use of conventional weapons, when the very existence of the state is threatened,” the ministry said.
On Wednesday, the New York Times published an article citing “multiple senior American officials,” who claimed some Russian generals had been discussing “when and how Moscow might use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine.” In response to this report, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the US considers the possibility “deeply concerning” and takes it “seriously,” but has not seen any indications Russia is actually preparing to use atomic weapons.
*A process of the evacuation of people from the right bank of the Dnieper River in the Kherson Region has been concluded and the local administration opted to suspend all traffic movement across the Dnieper River, the region’s administration announced on Wednesday.
"In connection with the competition of evacuation measures from the territory of the right bank of the Dnieper, as well as in regard to increased military threats aimed against the civilian population, the administration of the Kherson Region made a decision to halt the movement of civilian transportation across the Dnieper," the administration announced in a statement posted on its Telegram channel.
According to the statement, an issued ban to cross the Dnieper River is also in effect to the use of river boats, tugboats and other means of river navigation. A local pontoon ferry was also closed indefinitely.
Kherson Region acting governor, Vladimir Saldo, said on October 18 that people living on the Dnieper right bank would be relocated to the left bank due to the risk of flooding triggered by Ukraine’s attack on the Kakhovka hydropower plant. On October 31, he said that the evacuation zone on the left-bank part of the region would be expanded to a distance of 15 kilometers from the Dnieper.
From September 23 to September 27, the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic as well as the Kherson Region and the Zaporozhye Region held a referendum where the majority of voters opted to join Russia.
On September 30, Russian President Vladimir Putin and the heads of the DPR, the LPR, and the Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions signed treaties on their accession to Russia. Later, the State Duma and the Federation Council (the lower and upper houses of Russia’s parliament) approved legislation on ratifying these treaties, as well as federal constitutional laws on the accession of the four regions to Russia.
*Moscow will continue taking efforts on establishing all facts connected with the activities of US biological laboratories in Ukraine, though the UN Security Council has not welcomed such an investigation to be carried out, Russia’s First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyansky said at the UNSC meeting on Wednesday.
"Irrespective of the result of today’s voting we still have questions to the US and Ukraine. The files appended to our complaint still require explanation. We will continue acting within the framework of the Convention on Biological and Toxin Weapons and taking efforts necessary for establishing all facts connected with violations of the US and Ukraine on their obligations on the Convention in the context of activities of biological laboratories on Ukrainian territory," he said.
AP/RT/TASS
