Ukraine prepares for intensified Russian attacks as EU weighs membership bid

Issued on: 20/06/2022 – 05:45Modified: 20/06/2022 – 06:24

6:24am: EU seeks to release Ukrainian grain stuck due to Russia’s sea blockade

European Union foreign ministers will discuss ways to free millions of tonnes of grain stuck in Ukraine due to Russia’s Black Sea port blockade at a meeting in Luxembourg on Monday.

Ukraine is one of the top wheat suppliers globally, but its grain shipments have stalled and more than 20 million tonnes have been trapped in silos since Russia’s invaded the country and blocked its ports.

Moscow denies responsibility for the food crisis and blames Western sanctions for the shortage that has led to a jump in global food prices and warnings by the United Nations of hunger in poorer countries that rely heavily on imported grain.

The EU supports efforts by the United Nations to broker a deal to resume Ukraine’s sea exports in return for facilitating Russian food and fertilizer exports, but that would need Moscow’s green light.

Turkey has good relations with both Kyiv and Moscow, and has said it is ready to take up a role within an “observation mechanism” based in Istanbul if there is a deal.

05:45 am: Ukraine prepares for intensified Russian attacks as EU weighs membership bid

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky warned Sunday that Russia was likely to intensify its “hostile activity” this week, as Kyiv awaits a historic decision from the European Union on its membership application.

Nearly three months after Russia launched a bloody invasion of his country, Zelensky said there had been “few such fateful decisions for Ukraine” as the one it expects from the EU this week, adding in his evening address that “only a positive decision is in the interests of the whole of Europe”.

Ukraine applied to join the EU four days after Russian troops poured across its border in February. The EU’s executive, the European Commission, on Friday recommended that Ukraine receive candidate status.

Leaders of the 27-nation union will consider the question at a summit on Thursday and Friday and are expected to endorse Ukraine’s application despite misgivings from some member states. The process could take many years to complete.

The EU’s embrace of Ukraine would interfere with one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s stated goals when he ordered his troops into Ukraine: to keep Moscow’s southern neighbour outside of the West’s sphere of influence.

“Obviously, we expect Russia to intensify hostile activity this week … We are preparing. We are ready,” Zelensky said.

05:19 am: Russia claims deadly strikes on military meeting, weapons depot

Ukraine said Sunday it had repulsed fresh attacks by Russian forces on the eastern front, rocked by weeks of fierce battles as Moscow tries to seize the industrial Donbas region.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday it launched missile strikes during the past 24 hours, with one attack by Kalibr missiles on a top-level Ukrainian military meeting near the city of Dnipro killing “more than 50 generals and officers”.

It said it also targeted a building housing Western-provided weapons in the holdout Black Sea city of Mykolaiv, destroying “ten 155mm howitzers and around 20 armoured vehicles supplied by the West to the Kyiv regime over the last ten days”.

There was no independent verification of the claims.

Ukraine has repeatedly urged Western countries to step up their deliveries of arms since the February 24 invasion, despite warnings from nuclear-armed Russia that it could trigger wider conflict.

Ukrainian president Zelensky spoke Sunday after making a rare trip outside Kyiv a day earlier to Mykolaiv, where he visited troops nearby and in the neighbouring Odessa region for the first time since the invasion.

“We will not give away the south to anyone, we will return everything that’s ours and the sea will be Ukrainian and safe,” he said in a video posted on Telegram as he made his way back to Kyiv.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and REUTERS)