Ukraine launched a massive drone and missile strike on Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, damaging two major grain export terminals and striking the last big Russian naval base on the Black Sea. The overnight attack killed three people, including an eight-year-old child, and injured 24 more, according to regional governor Veniamin Kondratyev. The assault has disrupted grain shipments from both Russia and Ukraine, sending global wheat prices higher and raising fresh concerns about food supplies for buyers in North Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia.
Most of Russia’s Black Sea fleet is docked in Novorossiysk, one of the largest ports in Russia, after Moscow was forced to vacate its former base at Sevastopol in occupied Crimea, which had become too exposed to Ukrainian attacks. Repeated explosions rang out over the city throughout the night as air defences shot down aerial objects. An emergency situation was declared on Wednesday after drones struck areas around the port, damaging pipelines and suspending the city’s water supply. Kondratyev said several locations in the surrounding Krasnodar region were also struck by “several hundred drones” overnight, with dozens of buildings damaged, including homes. A man was killed by drone debris elsewhere in the region.
President Volodymyr Zelensky described the operation as a success. He said Kyiv had launched rockets, jet drones, and naval drones in a “unique operation” to strike the Russian base. Ukraine’s military later said four Russian warships, including two frigates, were hit. Zelensky did not mention the grain terminals. He said Russia’s Admiral Essen and Admiral Makarov frigates, a large landing ship, a corvette, and other vessels were struck. “The occupying fleet and all the infrastructure that supports it will not be safe as long as Russian aggression continues,” Zelensky said in a post on social media. Russia has not commented on the issue.
Grain markets feel the impact
Two Russian grain trading companies confirmed to Russia’s TASS news agency and to Reuters and RBK that their terminals had been hit. Russia’s agriculture ministry announced it was working to redirect cargo flows to ports in the Baltic and Caspian Seas as well as land routes, citing “current logistical constraints” without referencing Ukraine’s attacks. Russia is the world’s largest wheat exporter.
According to SovEcon, an agricultural consultancy, Russia was on track to export between 3 million and 3.4 million metric tons of wheat this month, far below the five-year August average of 5 million tons. That could represent the lowest August total since the 2016-2017 agricultural season, following a weak July. A Moscow-based analytics company said exports for August could fall by more than half compared to the same month over the last five years due to the disruption in the Black and Azov seas.
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Ukraine of carrying out strikes on Russian grain and agricultural infrastructure, resulting in a hike in global food prices and growing grain shortages. She said Russia would continue striking facilities that Ukraine’s armed forces use on the Black Sea until “the full elimination of threats to security projected to the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea.” The last remaining sea route out of Ukraine has also been badly affected by several deadly Russian strikes on cargo ships and the port of Odesa, through which Moscow seeks to discourage foreign companies from trading with Ukraine. In July, the Ukrainian Agribusiness Club reported a 23 percent decrease in exports. Ukraine has grown increasingly adept at carrying out long-range strikes on Russian territory, and its recent attacks on vessels in the eastern Black Sea have disrupted Russia’s grain shipments as well.
Escalation on both sides
For its part, Moscow launched aerial overnight strikes which killed at least 11 civilians in Ukraine between Tuesday and Wednesday. The majority were killed when Russia hit the southern city of Zaporizhzhia with ballistic missiles and glide bombs. Russian forces also struck Ukraine’s Izmail port in southern Odesa, setting off a fire, authorities said, a day after Kyiv pounded Novorossiysk. Izmail, close to the Romanian border, is home to Ukraine’s largest Danube port, handling grain and other commodities.
Ukraine faces a deepening crisis in air defense. Zelensky told CNN that Ukraine would need a tenth of the current US stockpile of interceptor missiles to stop all Russian ballistic missile attacks, and 5 percent to get through winter. He said Ukraine this year has two and a half times fewer interceptors than it did in 2025. “Russia has two times more ballistic missiles per month than they had before,” he said. Last month, Russia fired more than 450 missiles at Ukraine, nearly 200 of them on ballistic trajectories. In one attack, Ukraine failed to intercept any of the 28 ballistic missiles launched at it.
Ukraine’s air force said it would stop publishing detailed figures on Russian ballistic missile strikes as Ukrainian forces struggle to intercept Russia’s heightened attacks. The restrictions concern the number of targets launched, shot down, suppressed, or those that failed to reach their targets, air force communications chief Yurii Ihnat said on Facebook. Real-time warnings would continue unchanged, he added. Ukraine has reported an acute shortage of Patriot interceptors since the US and Israel launched the war on Iran in February, diverting supplies of the advanced systems. Ballistic missiles are much harder to intercept than cruise missiles or drones because they move faster and follow steep trajectories.
Together, Russia and Ukraine account for a significant share of global grain trade. The 2022 Black Sea Grain Initiative, under which Russia agreed to lift its blockade on Ukraine’s agricultural exports, did not last after Moscow resumed attacks on vessels using the maritime corridors to Odesa the following year. Concerns over how the war would affect global food supplies have been persistent since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022. The attack follows an uptick in the exchange of strikes in the Black Sea this summer, after a period of relative calm.