Russian forces attacked Ukrainian ports on the Danube River with drones early Wednesday, damaging granaries and warehouses which can be used to export grain, in response to Ukrainian officers and the Defense Ministry of neighboring Romania.

The ministry condemned the attacks, on the ports of Reni and Izmail — Ukraine’s two principal ports on the Danube, which lie simply throughout the water from Romania.

Andriy Yermak, the top of Ukraine’s presidential workplace, mentioned Russian drones had struck two hangar-type warehouses within the port of Reni within the Odesa area. No one was injured, he mentioned.

Ukraine’s Air Force mentioned it had shot down 13 drones within the Odesa and Mykolaiv areas, primarily aimed toward port infrastructure, however didn’t element what number of received by means of or whether or not the harm had been brought on by the particles of intercepted drones.

A sequence of assaults alongside the Danube in current weeks have caused alarm, partially due to the proximity of a few of the ports to Romania, a NATO member.

The Danube delta grew to become a right away various waterway for grain ships after Russia resumed its blockade final month of main Ukrainian ports alongside the Black Sea. But Russia quickly started attacking the smaller ports on the Danube as effectively, bombing Ukrainian grain-loading amenities there.

On Wednesday, the United States condemned the repeated assaults. “It is unacceptable,” Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesmen, advised reporters at a news briefing in Washington. “Putin simply does not care about global food security.”

On Sunday, Russian forces fired warning shots before boarding a business vessel heading to a Ukrainian port on the Danube, additional growing tensions across the Black Sea and persevering with efforts to choke off Ukraine’s meals exports.

Separately on Wednesday morning, three drones had been shot down by air defenses within the Kaluga area of Russia, instantly to the southwest of the Moscow area, Russia’s Defense Ministry said. The ministry mentioned that Ukraine was behind the assault, however that declare couldn’t instantly be verified independently.

There have been greater than a dozen tried drone assaults in and round Moscow since May.