The purpose of this post is to illustrate how little ground has been gained so far during Ukraine's two-and-a-half month counteroffensive. Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with the maps below from our daily updates on the territorial picture in Ukraine - but it can be hard to get a sense of how they change over time. 'There's a lot of politics around this,' he says. Professor Clarke says grain prices are about a third higher in the world, which has left Russia's partners in Africa and China unhappy. The deal was brokered by Turkey and the UN, and had allowed Ukrainian grain to be transported safely. Moscow is therefore wanting to destroy Ukraine's port facilities as well as trying to stop ships using Izmail.īut he says that with rumours Vladimir Putin is going to Turkey this week, the Russian president could face pressure to reopen the Black Sea grain deal. He explains that Russia had a bumper grain harvest last year and will be wanting to get its grain onto the world market - as well as wanted to stop the Ukrainians getting theirs onto the market. 'The nature of the game now is trying to displace Ukraine from the market entirely,' he says. Professor Clarke says it is therefore clear Russia is 'trying to destroy whole grain infrastructure of Ukraine'. On top of this, Ukraine this morning reported missile strikes on the port city of Odesa. Our defence and security analyst Professor Michael Clarke says the Ukrainians have been using the Danube to transport a lot of their grains. The vessel was a Turkish ship on its way to the Izmail port on the Danube River.

As we've been reporting, Russia yesterday disrupted a cargo ship in the Black Sea by firing warning shots and stopping and searching it.

Us navy world war 2 ranks