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Izmail port hit
Russian forces struck Ukraine’s Izmail port in southern Odesa, setting off a fire and damaging “port infrastructure,” the Izmail Regional State Administration said in a Telegram statement early on Thursday.
“Russian forces struck Ukraine’s Izmail port in southern Odesa, setting off a fire”
The attack came a day after Kyiv pounded Russia’s Novorossiysk port, and Izmail—close to the Romanian border—is home to Ukraine’s largest Danube port that handles grain and other commodities.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told CNN that Ukraine needs 5 percent of the United States’s Patriot interceptor missiles to get through the winter and 10 percent to destroy all of Russia’s ballistic projectiles.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine this year “had two and a half times less interceptors than we had in 2025,” and he added, “Russia has two times more ballistic missiles per month than they had before.”
Romanian jets, Zelenskyy
Romania, a member of NATO and the European Union, scrambled two fighter jets after an aerial target spent about 10 minutes in national airspace before leaving for Ukraine, its defense ministry said on X.
Ukrainian air force communications chief Yurii Ihnat said on Facebook that the air force would stop publishing detailed figures on Russian ballistic missile strikes, while real-time warnings would continue unchanged.
In a statement on the Telegram app, the Izmail District State Administration said, “The adversary struck port infrastructure. As a result of the attack, there is damage and a fire broke out,” adding that State Emergency Service units were working to eliminate the consequences.
Reuters reported that Ukraine has conveyed to Russia a proposal to suspend attacks against civilian targets in the Black Sea, but “has not yet received a response.”
Food exports at risk
The renewed strikes on ports and ships in the Black Sea have reduced grain exports to new lows, with exports plunged 75% so far in August compared with the same period last year, according to Ukrainian port authorities cited by El País.
“Exports have plunged 75% so far in August”
El País said shipments have been virtually paralyzed after Russia launched more than 70 attacks on Black Sea port infrastructure and 62 against ships, while the Kremlin argued its actions target military and logistical structures and ships transporting foreign weapons.
Ukraine has proposed to Moldova establishing a rail corridor to transport cereal to the Romanian port of Constanza, which El País said could move up to 4.5 million tonnes annually, roughly 10% of Ukraine’s grain exports.
El País also said Ukraine’s central bank estimates that the blockade could cost the country about $2.5 billion (€2.17 billion) in foreign exchange earnings for the rest of the year, and it warned of a potential storage capacity shortfall of up to 11 million tonnes.
