Following the Ukrainian attack on the fleet at the Sevastopol base, Russia has suspended the grain agreement allowing Ukrainian grain exports by sea. The Russian ships that ensured the security of the corridor for these exports are located in the Sevastopol base targeted this morning by the Ukrainian attack.
On 29 October at 4.20am, Ukraine launched an attack on Black Sea Fleet ships and civilian vessels on the outer and inner roadsides of the Sevastopol base. The attack, which lasted several hours, involved nine aerial and seven marine drones (supplied to Ukraine by the West), and a US RQ-4B Global Hawk drone was flying nearby in the neutral waters of the Black Sea, apparently to monitor the attack.
Russian anti-aircraft defense quickly destroyed all the flying drones. For its part, the Black Sea Fleet destroyed four of the sea drones in the outer harbour of Sevastopol, and the other three sea drones in the inner harbour. Only the sea minesweeper Ivan Goloubets and a floating boom of anti-torpedo nets in Yuzhnaya Bay suffered minor damage from the attack.
As a result of the attack, ship and ferry traffic in Sevastopol Bay was blocked for several hours for security reasons.
The governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvojayev, said the attack on the city and Black Sea Fleet facilities was the largest ever recorded since the start of the special military operation, but that no facilities in the city had been hit.
The Russian Ministry of Defense stressed that the ships of the Black Sea Fleet stationed in Sevastopol, which suffered this terrorist attack by Ukraine, are involved in securing the maritime corridor for the implementation of the grain agreement (an international agreement allowing Kiev to continue to export its agri-food products by sea in complete safety despite the ongoing conflict).
However, this cereal agreement, which was supposedly concluded to avoid famine in poor countries, had already proved to be a huge deception, since in the end it was mainly the countries of the European Union that benefited from the cereal deliveries sent by Ukraine from the port of Odessa, thanks to this agreement.
Indeed, according to data provided by the Joint Coordination Centre, out of 185 ships loaded with grain and other food products that left Ukraine, 93 went to the EU, five went to countries most in need of food in Sub-Saharan Africa, and three went to countries at risk of food shortages in the Middle East and Asia.
Clearly, the rich countries got the lion's share of the money, and the food-deficient countries only got a few crumbs. And this despite the fact that this cereal agreement was loudly demanded by the West to supposedly prevent famine in poor countries. Once again, we can see that there is a gap as wide as the Valles Marineris canyon between the fine words of Western authorities and their actions.
This alone would have been ample justification for calling the grain agreement into question. But after the attack on the morning of 29 October 2022 on the ships securing the sea corridor, which was carried out by Ukraine with the help, training and supervision of British specialists, and obviously also by the United States (since one of their drones monitored the attack), it was clear that the grain deal could no longer be maintained.
As a result, once the attack was over, and the Bay of Sevastopol reopened to maritime traffic, Russia publicly announced the outright suspension of the grain agreement for an indefinite period of time, as Ukraine is unable to comply with its terms.
"On 29 October, under the cover of the humanitarian corridor created within the framework of the "Black Sea Initiative" to export Ukrainian agricultural products, the Ukrainian armed forces carried out massive air and naval strikes using drones against the ships and infrastructure of the Russian Black Sea Fleet at the Sevastopol naval base. Due to the actions of the Ukrainian armed forces, supervised by British specialists, directed, inter alia, against the Russian ships operating the so-called humanitarian corridor (which cannot be qualified otherwise than as a terrorist act), the Russian side cannot guarantee the safety of the civilian cargoes participating in the 'Black Sea Initiative' and suspends its implementation as of today for an indefinite period of time," the Russian Foreign Ministry said this afternoon.
The Russian Ministry of Defense has also accused the British specialists who trained Ukrainian soldiers for the attack on Sevastopol of having also participated in the organisation and implementation of the terrorist attack in the Baltic Sea on 26 September 2022, which damaged the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines.
In view of the images from the marine drones involved published by Ukraine itself (first video below), the drones in question would be of the same type as the one found stranded near Sevastopol at the end of September (see second Telegram post).
In the meantime, merchant ships are no longer allowed by Russia to enter or leave the Black Sea ports still controlled by Ukraine. And with Moscow calling the Sevastopol attack a terrorist act, we can potentially expect, as after the Crimean bridge attack, to see massive kamikaze missile and drone attacks against Ukraine in the coming hours and days, and especially against Odessa and Nikolayev.