Ukraine Launches Inquiry into Alleged War Crimes in Attack on Grain Port

Attack on Izmail Port in Ukraine. (Wikimedia Commons/State Emergency Service of Ukraine)

JAKARTA - Ukraine's attorney general is investigating Russian attacks on its agricultural infrastructure since July as potential war crimes, the office said Thursday.

Shelling of agricultural installations increased after Russia withdrew from its Black Sea Grain Initiative export deal with Ukraine on July 17.

"Overall, since the start of the full-scale invasion, Russian forces have carried out more than 100 attacks on Ukraine's grain infrastructure and ports," the attorney general's office said in a statement.

"Ukraine is investigating these acts as potential war crimes," he said.

Ukrainian authorities have reviewed more than 97,000 reports of alleged war crimes, bringing charges against 220 suspects in domestic courts.

Ukrainian prosecutors, along with the International Criminal Court in The Hague, are investigating potential war crimes over a winter campaign of air strikes against Ukraine's national energy and utility infrastructure, as well as an attack on the Nova Kakhovka hydroelectric dam in the southern Kherson region.

Moscow has previously said energy infrastructure is a legitimate military target.

Russia itself describes its recent attacks on Ukraine's grain infrastructure as retaliation for a Ukrainian attack on a bridge across the Kerch Strait to Crimea it uses to supply its troops in southern Ukraine.

Earlier, Russia's state news agency, RIA, said on Wednesday that the infrastructure attacked in Izmail Port was the residence of foreign mercenaries and military hardware. A naval repair shop was also targeted, he said.