Ukraine's deputy prime minister on Sunday urged civilians in the Russian-occupied southern region of Kherson to urgently evacuate as Ukraine's armed forces were preparing a counterattack there.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
Ukraine lost control of most of the Black Sea region of Kherson, including its eponymous capital, in the first weeks after Russia's Feb. 24 invasion.
"It's clear there will be fighting, there will be artillery shelling ... and we, therefore, urge [people] to evacuate urgently," Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on national television.
She said she could not say when exactly the counter-offensive would happen.
"I know for sure that there should not be women and children there and that they should not become human shields," she said.
Kherson's Russian-installed authorities say they want to hold a referendum on seceding to Russia, but they have not yet set a date. The Kremlin says the future of the region should be determined by its residents.
The Kherson region includes the city of Kherson, which before the war had a population of nearly 300,000. It is not known how many of the city's residents are still there.
Meanwhile, the death toll from a Russian rocket attack that hit an apartment block in eastern Ukraine over the weekend rose to 18 on Monday and rescuers were still racing to reach survivors in the rubble, the emergency services said.
Rescuers were in voice contact with two people trapped in the ruins of the five-story block in the town of Chasiv Yar in Donetsk region that was struck late on Saturday, the service said.
"As of 08:45 on July 11, ... 18 people were killed, 6 people were rescued from the rubble, about 137 tonnes of rubble were cleared...," it said.
Russia, which invaded Ukraine in what it calls a special military operation, denies targeting civilians.
Anxiety among Ukraine's grain farmers has also been growing, as the harvest begins.
The war has trapped about 22 million tons of grain inside Ukraine, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a growing crisis for the country known as the "breadbasket of Europe" for its exports of wheat, corn and sunflower oil.
Before Russia's invasion, Ukraine could export 6 million to 7 million tons of grain per month, but in June it shipped only 2.2 million tons, according to the Ukrainian Grain Association. Normally, it sends about 30% of its grain to Europe, 30% to North Africa and 40% to Asia, said Mykola Horbachov, head of the association.
With Russia's blockade of Ukraine's Black Sea ports, the fate of the upcoming harvest in Ukraine is in doubt. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization says the war is endangering food supplies for many developing nations and could worsen hunger for up to 181 million people.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said his country is working with the UN, Ukraine, and Russia to find a solution, offering safe corridors in the Black Sea for wheat shipments.
For now, Ukraine is trying less-effective alternatives to export its grain, at least to Europe. Currently, 30% of exports go via three Danube River ports in southwestern Ukraine.
The country also is trying to ship grain via 12 border crossings with European countries, but trucks must wait in line for days, and Europe's infrastructure cannot yet absorb such a volume of grain.
"It's impossible to build such infrastructure in one year," Horbachov said.
Russia's invasion also caused transportation costs to soar. The price to deliver this year's harvested barley to the closest Romanian port, Constanta, is now $160 to $180 per ton, up from $40 to $45. And yet a farmer selling barley to a trader gets less than $100 per ton.
The losses are piling up, along with the harvest.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
