TOP HEADLINES

• Shipping grain out of Ukrainian Black Sea ports without security guarantees from Russia would carry risks because Ukraine uses those waters for military activities, the Kremlin said on Tuesday. 

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday that he and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres had agreed during a telephone conversation to work towards renewing Black Sea grain shipments. READ MORE BELOW

• Russia struck Ukraine's port of Odesa with missiles and drones on Tuesday, a day after pulling out of a UN-backed deal to let Kyiv export grain, and Ukrainian officials said Moscow was attempting to go back on the offensive in the east. READ MORE BELOW

• Kyiv reported a "complicated" situation in fighting in eastern Ukraine and success in parts of the south on Tuesday as it pressed on with its counteroffensive against Russian forces.

• Russia repelled a Ukrainian drone attack on Crimea in the early hours of Tuesday, the Russian defense ministry said, a day after an attack on the Crimean bridge which damaged it and disrupted car traffic.

• Britain will announce on Tuesday plans to improve the combat readiness of its military, including spending $3.3 billion on replenishing munitions and stockpiles that have been depleted by the war in Ukraine.

• Russian forces have advanced by up to two kilometers in the direction of the city of Kupiansk in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region, TASS cited Russia's defense ministry as saying on Tuesday.

IN DEPTH

'Africa and Asia has the right to stability': Zelenskyy says grain deal must continue

The Black Sea grain shipment deal must continue and could operate without Russian participation after Moscow's withdrawal on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

Ukraine, Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address, was a food source for 400 million people. "Africa has the right to stability. Asia has the right to stability," he said.

Russia halted participation on Monday in the year-old agreement that lets Ukraine export grain through a Black Sea safe shipping corridor, causing concern in poorer countries that price rises will put food out of reach.

Moscow suggested that if demands to improve exports of its own grain and fertilizer were met it would consider resurrecting the deal formally known as the Black Sea Grain Initiative.

The deal brokered by the United Nations and Türkiye was hailed as preventing a global food emergency.

In a separate message on the Telegram app, Zelenskyy said that in a phone conversation with United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, the two men agreed "to work together, and with the relevant countries, to renew food security and food shipments by way of the Black Sea."

Russia says Ukrainian ports targeted in 'mass revenge strike'

Russia's Defense Ministry said it had hit military targets in two Ukrainian port cities overnight in what it called "a mass revenge strike," a day after an attack on the Crimean bridge which it blamed on Kyiv.

The ministry said it had struck Odesa, where the Ukrainian navy has a facility, and Mykolaiv on Ukraine's Black Sea coast.

"The armed forces of the Russian Federation carried out a mass retaliatory strike overnight using precision sea-based weapons against facilities where terrorist acts against the Russian Federation were being prepared using uncrewed boats," the ministry said in a statement.

It said it had struck a ship repair plant near Odesa where such boats were being built.

"In addition, storage facilities holding around 70,000 tons of fuel used to supply the Ukrainian military's equipment were destroyed" near the cities of Mykolaiv and Odesa, it said.

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