Ships brought grain from Ukrainian ports on Monday, which shows that Moscow didn’t put back a blockade that could have led to world hunger, even though it stopped taking part in a U.N. program to help safely export grain from the war zone.

As Russia launched more air attacks, air raid sirens went off all over Ukraine and there were explosions in Kyiv that sent black smoke into the sky.

Officials in Ukraine said that damage to energy infrastructure cut off power supplies.

The Ukrainian military said that it had destroyed 44 out of 50 Russian missiles but attacks on the city’s pumping system left 80 percent of Kyiv without running water, officials said, adding that they hoped to get it back up and running quickly.

Two people were hurt in the Kyiv area, according to reports.

Still, the fact that food was being shipped out of Ukrainian ports again showed that at least one bad thing had been stopped for now.

International leaders were worried that Russia would put up a new blockade on Ukrainian grain after announcing on Saturday that it would stop taking part in a U.N.-backed program that guides cargo ships through the Black Sea.

“Civilian cargo ships can never be attacked by the military or used as hostages. The food has to come in,” The program’s U.N. coordinator, Amir Abdullah, wrote about it on Twitter.

Soon after, Ukraine said that 12 ships had left port.

The 354,500 tons of grain they carried in one day was the most since the program started, which suggests that a backlog was being cleared after exports were stopped on Sunday.

But it wasn’t clear right away if shipments would be stopped again after Monday, or if insurance companies would let more ships sail.

Russia’s missile attacks during Monday morning’s rush hour were a repeat of what it has been doing all month: hitting civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, especially power plants.

Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said, “Russia doesn’t fight on the battlefield; it fights civilians.” “Don’t call these attacks a “response” to make them seem okay. This is because Russia still has missiles and wants to kill Ukrainians.”

Bridget Brink, the U.S. ambassador to Kyiv, tweeted, “Like millions of Ukrainians, our @USEmbassyKyiv team is once again taking shelter as Russia continues its cruel and barbaric missile strikes on the people of Ukraine in an attempt to leave the country cold and dark as winter approaches.”

Russia has been attacking Ukrainian civil infrastructure for the past three weeks with expensive long-range missiles and cheap “suicide drones” made in Iran that fly to a target and blow up when they get close.

Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said that on Monday, missiles and drones hit 18 targets, most of which were energy infrastructure, in 10 different parts of Ukraine.

HUNGER AVERTED

Moscow said it had to back out of the Black Sea grain shipping deal because Ukraine was to blame for explosions that damaged Russian navy ships in the port of Sevastopol, Crimea, on Saturday.

Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied that it was behind the explosions at the base of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Crimea.

However, it says that Russia’s navy is a legitimate military target. Moscow said that a wave of the sea and air drones caused the explosions.

The United States said that Russia was using food as a weapon after it stopped taking part in the grain shipping program over the weekend.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the president of Ukraine, said that Moscow was “blackmailing the world with hunger.” Russia says that’s not its goal.

Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, said that the U.N.-brokered deal was “hardly possible” because Russia could no longer guarantee that shipping would be safe.

He didn’t say why shipments were now dangerous, and he also wouldn’t say under what circumstances Moscow could rejoin the arrangement.

But the fact that grain shipments from Ukraine started again on Monday showed that Moscow was not trying to impose a new blockade.

Ukraine and Russia are two of the biggest food exporters in the world.

The U.N.-backed deal has made sure that Ukrainian exports can reach markets for the past three months.

This has ended Russia’s de facto blockade of Ukraine.

When the news came out that Moscow was leaving the deal, wheat prices around the world went up by more than 5% on Monday morning.

One of the ships that left on Monday was hired by the World Food Programme of the United Nations to bring 40,000 tons of grain to drought-stricken Africa.

In a speech, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who helped broker the grain deal, said, “Even if Russia acts hesitantly because it didn’t get the same benefits, we will keep working hard to help humanity.”

“Our work to get this wheat to countries where people are at risk of starving is clear. With the joint mechanism we set up in Istanbul, we helped ease a worldwide food shortage” he said.

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