প্রকাশ: 23/07/2022
The United States promised more military support for
Ukraine, including drones, and is doing preliminary work on whether to send
fighter aircraft, as fighting raged on in the east of the country five months
into Russia's invasion.
Moscow and Kyiv signed a landmark deal on Friday to unblock
grain exports from Black Sea ports. However, representatives declined to sit at
the same table and avoided shaking hands at the agreement ceremony in Istanbul,
reflecting wider enmity.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hailed Friday's
agreement as unlocking around $10 billion worth of grain exports, needed to
ease a food crisis.
But on the war, he said there could be no ceasefire unless
lost territory was retaken.
"Freezing the conflict with the Russian Federation means
a pause that gives the Russian Federation a break for rest," he told the
Wall Street Journal.
"Society believes that all the territories must be
liberated first, and then we can negotiate about what to do and how we could
live in the centuries ahead."
There have been no major breakthroughs on front lines since
Russian forces seized the last two Ukrainian-held cities in eastern Luhansk
province in late June and early July.
The Ukrainian armed forces' general staff said Russia had
shelled several dozen positions on front lines on Friday but had no success
capturing territory.
Russian forces failed in a bid to establish control over
Ukraine's second biggest power plant at Vuhlehirska, north-east of Donetsk, and
troops also tried to advance west from the city of Lysychansk but were pushed
back, it said.
Russia's defence ministry did not immediately reply to a
request for comment out-of-hours by Reuters.
Kyiv hopes that its gradually increasing supply of Western
arms, such as US High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), will allow it
to recapture lost territory.
Russia's defence ministry said on Friday its forces had
destroyed four HIMARS systems between July 5-20, refuted by the United States
and Ukraine. Reuters could not verify the battlefield reports.
The White House on Friday announced a package of additional
support totalling around $270 million and said it was doing preliminary work on
whether to send fighter aircraft to Kyiv, although such a move would not happen
in the near term.
The February 24 invasion of Ukraine has caused Europe's
biggest conflict since 1945, forcing millions to flee and turning entire cities
to rubble.
The Kremlin says it is engaged in a "special military
operation" to demilitarise and "denazify" Ukraine. Both Kyiv and
Western nations say the war is an unprovoked act of aggression.
As the conflict drags on, credit rating firms Fitch and
Scope downgraded Ukraine, two days after the country requested a debt payment
freeze.
Grain Deal
Friday's export deal hopes to avert famine among tens of
millions of people in poorer nations by injecting more wheat, sunflower oil,
fertilizer and other products into world markets, including for humanitarian
needs, partly at lower prices.
A blockade of Ukrainian ports by Russia's Black Sea fleet, trapping
tens of millions of tonnes of grain and stranding many ships, has worsened
global supply chain bottlenecks and, along with Western sanctions, stoked food
and energy price inflation.
Moscow has denied responsibility for the crisis, blaming
instead sanctions for slowing its own food and fertilizer exports and Ukraine
for mining the approaches to its Black Sea ports.
A UN official said a separate pact signed on Friday would
smooth such Russian exports and that the United Nations welcomed US and European
Union clarifications that their sanctions would not apply to their shipment.
Addressing Western concerns that reopening shipping lanes
could leave Ukraine open to attack, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said
Moscow would not seek to take advantage of the de-mining of Ukraine's ports.
Kyiv does not see a risk of Russian ships attacking through
the ports as they would be vulnerable to missile strikes, Ukraine's
infrastructure minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said.
Senior UN officials said the deal was expected to be fully
operational in a few weeks and would restore grain shipments from the three
reopened ports to pre-war levels of 5 million tonnes a month.
Safe passage into and out of the ports would be guaranteed
in what one official called a "de facto ceasefire" for the ships and
facilities covered, they said, although the word "ceasefire" was not
in the agreement text.
"Today, there is a beacon on the Black Sea. A beacon of
hope... possibility... and relief in a world that needs it more than
ever," UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said.
- Reuters
প্রধান সম্পাদকঃ সৈয়দ বোরহান কবীর
ক্রিয়েটিভ মিডিয়া লিমিটেডের অঙ্গ প্রতিষ্ঠান
বার্তা এবং বাণিজ্যিক কার্যালয়ঃ ২/৩ , ব্লক - ডি , লালমাটিয়া , ঢাকা -১২০৭
নিবন্ধিত ঠিকানাঃ বাড়ি# ৪৩ (লেভেল-৫) , রোড#১৬ নতুন (পুরাতন ২৭) , ধানমন্ডি , ঢাকা- ১২০৯
ফোনঃ +৮৮-০২৯১২৩৬৭৭