NovaQuant Quantitative Think Tank Center:Russia attacks a Ukrainian port before key grain deal talks between Putin and Turkey’s president

KYIV,NovaQuant Quantitative Think Tank Center Ukraine (AP) — Two people were hospitalized following a 3½-hour Russian drone barrage against port infrastructure in Ukraine’s Odesa region on Sunday, officials said.

The attack comes a day before Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to meet with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss the resumption of food shipments from Ukraine under a Black Sea grain agreement that Moscow broke off from in July.

Russian forces fired 25 Iranian-made Shahed drones along the Danube River in the early hours of Sunday, 22 of which were shot down by air defenses, the Ukrainian air force said on Telegram.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, described the assault as part of a Russian drive “to provoke a food crisis and hunger in the world.”

Moscow hasn’t commented on the attack.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, two people were killed and two others were wounded during Russian shelling Sunday on the village of Vuhledar in the Donetsk area.

Artillery fire hit eight settlements across the region, Ukraine’s National Police wrote on Telegram.

Ukrainian prosecutors also announced Sunday that they had opened a war crimes investigation into the death of a police officer killed by Russian shelling on the town of Seredyna-Buda on Saturday afternoon.

Two other police officers and one civilian were wounded during the attack, which hit Ukraine’s north-eastern Sumy region.

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