Turkmenistan Airlines Suspends Flights To Moscow Due To ‘Situation In Airspace’

Russian drone strikes damaged grain facilities at the Ukrainian ports of Odesa and Izmayil overnight, authorities said on August 2, as air-raid alerts were declared across Ukraine.

A grain silo was damaged in Izmayil, one of the two Danube ports that Ukraine has been using to export its grain after Moscow last month refused to extend a Turkey and UN-brokered deal that had allowed the export of Ukrainian grain and other produce by sea.

“Another elevator in the port of Izmayil, Odesa region, was damaged by Russians. Ukrainian grain has the potential to feed millions of people worldwide,” the ministry wrote on Twitter.

Izmayil is located some 15 kilometers north of Tulcea, a major Danube port of NATO-member Romania. Last week, Russian drones struck Reni, the other Danube port used by Ukraine to export grain. Reni is some 200 meters across the Danube from Romania.

In Odesa, Russian drones struck grain storage facilities, regional Governor Oleh Kiper reported.

“As a result of the attack, fires broke out at port facilities and at industrial infrastructure objectives in the region, and a [grain] elevator was damaged,” Kiper wrote on Telegram.

Odesa, Ukraine’s main Black Sea port, has been increasingly subjected to Russian shelling and drone attacks after Russia’s withdrawal from the grain deal.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a message on Telegram that port installations in the south had incurred significant damage.

“We are defending ourselves with the maximum of available forces…. Unfortunately, there is damage. The most significant is in the south of the country. Russian terrorists again attacked ports, grain, and global food security,” Zelenskiy said, adding, “Russia can and must be stopped.”

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis also condemned the attack on the Danube port, calling it a “war crime.”

“Russia’s continued attacks against the Ukrainian civilian infrastructure on Danube, in the proximity of Romania, are unacceptable. These are war crimes and they further affect UA’s capacity to transfer their food products towards those in need in the world,” Iohannis said on social media.

An overnight Russian drone attack on Kyiv failed to cause major damage or casualties, Kyiv’s regional governor, Serhiy Popko, said on Telegram.

“All air targets, more than 10 drones, were detected and destroyed by our air-defense forces,” Popko said.

“Nonresidential facilities and road surfaces have suffered some damage, but without serious destruction or fires,” Popko said. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

On the battlefield, Ukrainian forces have been engaged in heavy fighting in the northeast, where Russian forces have been attempting to advance in the Kupyansk direction, and in the southeast, where their counteroffensive has been making incremental progress in the face of stern Russian resistance aided by massive fortifications.

Ukrainian troops fought more than 40 close-combat battles over the past day, the General Staff of Ukraine’s military said in its daily report on August 2, adding that indiscriminate Russian shelling and air strikes had caused more casualties among civilians.

“During the past 24 hours, the enemy launched one missile, 75 air strikes, and 68 rocket salvoes on the positions of our troops and on civilian-populated areas. Unfortunately, there are victims among the civilian population,” the military said.

The previous day, a Russian missile attack hit a hospital in the southern city of Kherson, killing a doctor and injuring several medical workers.

In a separate incident in a northeastern village, an elderly woman was killed and a man was wounded in Russian shelling during the day on August 1.

Meanwhile, since the start of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, some 50,000 Ukrainians have lost arms or legs, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing data from the world’s largest prosthesis manufacturer, Germany’s Ottobock, and its medical partners.

The figures are comparable to those registered during World War I, the newspaper said. The actual number of amputees may be higher, it added, because prosthetics take time to make, and some victims wait weeks or even months for an amputation after being wounded.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, and The Wall Street journal