Ukraine updates: Russian drones threaten key Danube ports

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The Ukrainian military will not be able to operate F-16 fighter jets this year, an Air Force spokesperson said late on Wednesday.

"It's already obvious we won't be able to defend Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets during this autumn and winter," spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat said during a telethon.

Although the Biden administration has backed training for Ukrainian pilots on the US-made fighter jet, no timing for the supply of the jets has been announced.

"We had big hopes for this plane, that it will become part of air defense, able to protect us from Russia's missiles and drones terrorism," Ihnat said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hailed the first cargo ship to depart Ukraine using a new Black Sea lane. It comes after Moscow exited a deal protecting Ukrainian grain exports from its southern ports.

"Ukraine has just made an important step toward restoring the freedom of navigation in the Black Sea. The first civilian vessel has passed through Ukraine's new humanitarian corridor, departing from the port of Odesa," despite warnings from Moscow that its navy could target vessels, Zelenskyy said on social media.

The vessel, a Hong Kong-flagged container ship operated by a German firm, successfully crossed the Ukrainian part of the Black Sea late Wednesday, several hours after leaving the southern port of Odessa.

"I can confirm that the ship has left Ukrainian waters," a spokeswoman for operator Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement (BSM) in Hamburg told dpa on Wednesday evening. 

The US has criticized Russia's drone strikes on Ukraine's Danube infrastructure, saying it showed that President Vladimir Putin did not care about food supply for the developing world.

"It is unacceptable. Putin simply does not care about global food security," State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel told reporters.

The US State Department called for Moscow to return immediately to the grain deal.

"The contrast here is quite sharp. Our Ukrainian partners are inspiring the world, while Russia starves it by weaponizing food," Patel said.

NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu has told DW that the alliance condemns "Russia's repeated attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, such as Ukrainian grain storage facilities, including those close to the Romanian border."

"NATO Allies that have coastal borders have deployed ships to find and neutralize mines in the Black Sea, in order to protect human lives, as well as commercial shipping," Lungescu said.

The NATO-Ukraine Council recently addressed Russia's withdrawal from the Black Sea grain deal, as well as Moscow's "attempts to stop Ukraine's agricultural exports on which hundreds of millions of people depend worldwide," she said.

"These irresponsible actions jeopardize global food security and the safety of navigation." 

Belarus criticized Lithuania's decision to close two of its border checkpoints with the Moscow ally, calling it a "far-fetched" decision.

Lithuania said it was "temporarily suspending" two of the six border crossings between the two countries starting on Friday, saying it was due to the security risk posed by Russia's Wagner mercenary group. 

Wagner members have been taking refuge in Belarus since a failed mutiny against Russia's military leadership drove them there in June. But their presence in Belarus has sparked alarm among Minsk's western and northern neighbors.

"Lithuania, by taking such decisions, purposefully and deliberately creates artificial barriers on the border to serve its political ambitions," Belarus' border force said on social media. 

Belarus said the decision would cause traffic jams and lead to long waits at the border, calling the move an "unfriendly step."

The US Treasury department has announced sanctions on three entities it accused of links to arms deals between North Korea and Russia.

It was the latest move by Washington to crack down on those who seek to support Russia's war in Ukraine.

"The United States continues to root out illicit financial networks that seek to channel support from North Korea to Russia’s war machine," Treasury's Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson said in the statement.

"Alongside our allies and partners, we remain committed to exposing and disrupting the arms trade underpinning Putin's brutal war in Ukraine," the statement added.

The entities targeted are Limited Liability Company Verus, Defense Engineering Limited Liability Partnership and Versor S.R.O.

The president of Versor, Slovakian national Ashot Mkrtychev, is already under US sanctions. He is also the founder and owner of Verus and director of Defense Engineering.

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Wednesday that it had "eliminated" a group of four Ukrainian soldiers who had crossed the border into Russia in the region of Bryansk.

"The FSB of the Russian Federation and forces of the Defense Ministry in the border Starodubsky district in the Bryansk region prevented an attempt to infiltrate the territory of the Russian Federation," Russian news agencies reported, citing an FSB statement.

"Four saboteurs were eliminated."

The FSB also claimed the group was carrying "foreign weapons and explosive devices" and that they were planning "provocations and sabotage actions on Russian territory."

Moscow had previously said it had stopped an incursion at the border in Bryansk.

Ukraine has not commented on the alleged incident, but on previous occasions Kyiv has denied involvement in cross-border attacks, saying they were instead operations by anti-Kremlin Russian groups.

Following a Russian strike on Ukrainian ports at the mouth of the Danube, close to the border with Romania, the government in Bucharest has come out to condemn the attacks.

"I strongly condemn the continued Russian attacks on innocent people, civilian infrastructure, including grain silos in Ukrainian ports of Reni and Ismail," Foreign Minister Luminita Odobescu wrote on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

"By these flagrant violations of international law Russia continues to jeopardize global food security and the safety of navigation in the Black Sea," she added.

The two Ukrainian ports on the Romanian border were targeted by Russian drones that struck silos holding grain.

Romania is a member of the NATO alliance.

Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, the former Bundestag lawmaker from the Free Democratic Party (FDP), took up his post as Germany's ambassador to Russia on Wednesday, receiving a cold welcome from the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Russia bemoaned Germany's "confrontational and unfriendly character" and accused Berlin of "unreasonable Russophobia" as Lambsdorff began his time in the now sparsely occupied German Embassy in Moscow.

He took over from Geza Andreas von Geyr. Germany and Russia have both kicked out numerous diplomats belonging to the other side following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year.

The Baltic state of Lithuania closed two of its six border crossings into neighboring Belarus, the government said on Wednesday after the Russian mercenary Wagner Group was invited to take refuge there.

The two crossings are in rural parts of the country and are not used for commercial traffic.

By closing some border crossing points, Lithuania is following in the footsteps of Poland which had closed all but one of its crossings with Belarus.

Overnight Russian drone strikes hit Ukraine's river port of Reni on the Danube, the Ukrainian president's chief of staff Andriy Yermak said on Wednesday.

Ukrainian officials had earlier reported that Russian strikes damaged grain silos and warehouses in one of its Danube ports but did not specify which one.

Izmail is the other key Ukrainian port on the Danube.

A container ship left the Ukrainian port of Odesa on the Russia-blocked Black Sea on Wednesday, using a new and temporary humanitarian corridor for merchants, the government said.

"A first vessel used the temporary corridor for merchant ships to/from the ports of Big Odesa," Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said on Facebook.

Ukraine last week announced a "humanitarian corridor" in the Black Sea to release cargo ships that have been trapped in ports since Russia pulled out of a deal allowing for the ships' safe passage to bring the grain to world markets. 

Russia, however, has not said whether it will respect the corridor. 

Kubrakov said the vessel was from Hong Kong and had been in the port since February 23, 2022 — the day before the war began. 

"The corridor will be primarily used to evacuate ships that were in the Ukrainian ports (Chornomorsk, Odesa and Pivdennyi) at the time of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation," the deputy prime minister said.

Having recaptured the settlement in the Donetsk region from Russian forces, the Ukrainian army has now entrenched itself on the outskirts of Urozhaine. 

"Urozhaine liberated," said Ukraine's Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar in a post on Telegram. "Our defenders are entrenched on the outskirts. The offensive continues."

There was no immediate response to the Ukrainian claim from Moscow.

Fierce battles have ensued around Urozhaine and Staromaiorske in recent days. These settlements are a mere 60 miles away from the Russia-held Donetsk. 

Overnight Russian drone attacks on Ukraine's Danube River ports damaged some grain silos and warehouses, Odesa Governor Oleh Kiper said.

"Russian terrorists attacked Odesa region twice last night with attack drones. The main target is port and grain infrastructure in the south of the region," Kiper said on Telegram.

While Kiper did not mention which port was attacked, Ukraine's armed forces earlier said Russian-operated drones flew toward the Izmail port on the Danube River near the border with Romania. Another important port called Reni is also in the region. 

Russia has almost certainly begun deploying one-way UAV drones based on the Iranian Shahed designs, according to the UK Ministry of Defence. It added that Russia has been using Iran-made drones since September 2022. 

Iran has, so far, officially denied that Russia has deployed drones in its war in Ukraine.

Russia, however, likely aims for self-sufficiency in OWA-UAVs going forwards, the regularly posted report on social media said. 

"Indigenous manufacturing will likely allow Russia to establish a more reliable supply of OWA-UAVs. The performance of these weapons has been variable and Ukraine has proven effective in neutralising the majority of incoming OWA-UAVs," it said.