Russia said it would resume its blockade on Ukrainian grain, terminating the U.N.-backed Black Sea Grain Initiative that had helped sustain critical food supplies and temper rising food prices around the world. “Corn, soybean and wheat all shot up today as a result of this decision,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said about prices on Monday. “We’re seeing the impact right now.”
After Ukraine’s pre-dawn attack on a crucial bridge connecting mainland Russia and Crimea, which killed two people, a Kremlin official wrote early Tuesday on Telegram that part of the transit way had been reopened and posted videos of cars passing over it. Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed that Russia would respond to the incident.
Here’s the latest on the war and its ripple effects across the globe.
Ukraine aims to sap Russia’s defenses, as U.S. urges a decisive breakthrough: Ukraine is making limited advances in its counteroffensive against Russian forces but has yet to employ the kind of larger-scale operations that American officials believe could enable a breakthrough, officials and analysts say. Now, questions are deepening among some of Ukraine’s chief backers about whether Kyiv can move fast enough to match a finite supply of munitions and arms, Missy Ryan, Isabelle Khurshudyan and Michael Birnbaum report.
Five weeks into the highly anticipated operation, Ukrainian forces are attempting to weaken Russian defenses by firing fusillades of artillery and missiles and sending small teams of sappers into the sprawling minefields that constitute their adversary’s outermost ring of defense. But the pace of progress, in three main areas along a vast 600-mile front line, has generated concerns in the West that Zelensky’s government may not deliver as powerful a blow as it could.