A “massive” Ukrainian drone and missile strike on Russia’s port of Novorossiysk has damaged two major grain export terminals and hit the last big Russian naval base on the Black Sea, reports say.
Three people, including an eight-year-old child, were killed and another 24 injured in the overnight attack, local officials said.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv had launched rockets, jet and naval drones in a “unique operation” to strike the Russian base, although he did not mention grain terminals being hit.
Ukraine’s military later said four Russian warships, including two frigates, were hit. Russia has not commented on the issue.
“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.
Most of Russia’s Black Sea fleet is docked in Novorossiysk – one of the largest ports in Russia – after it was forced to vacate its former home base of Sevastopol, in the Russia-occupied Crimean peninsula, which was too exposed to Ukrainian attacks.
The attack follows an uptick in the exchange of strikes in the Black Sea this summer, after a period of relative calm.
In an interview with CNN, Zelensky said that Ukraine needs a tenth of the current US stockpile of interceptor missiles to stop all Russian ballistic missile attacks.
He added that 5% of the stockpile would get Ukraine through winter.
“This year we have two and a half times less interceptors than we had in 2025,” the Ukrainian president said.
“Russia has two times more ballistic missiles per month than they had before.”
A major grain trading company confirmed to Russia’s TASS news agency that its terminal had been hit in the attack on Wednesday, while another told Reuters and Russian outlet RBK the same.
The Russian agriculture ministry announced on Wednesday that it was working to redirect cargo flows to ports in the Baltic and Caspian Seas as well as land routes. It did not make any reference to Ukraine’s attacks but said it was “taking into account current logistical constraints”.
Repeated explosions reportedly rang out over Novorossiysk throughout the night as air defences shot down aerial objects.
An emergency situation was declared in the city on Wednesday, after the barrage of drones struck areas around the port and damaged pipelines, suspending water supply for the city.
Elsewhere in the region a man was killed by drone debris, regional Governor Veniamin Kondratyev said. Several locations in the surrounding Krasnodar region were also struck by “several hundred drones” overnight, Kondratyev added, with dozens of buildings damaged, including homes.
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 President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The last remaining sea route out of Ukraine has been badly affected by several deadly Russian strikes on cargo ships and the port of Odesa, through which Moscow seeks to put off foreign companies from trading with Ukraine. In July, the Ukrainian Agribusiness Club (UCAB) reported a 23% decrease in exports.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has grown increasingly adept at carrying out long-range strikes on Russian territory. Its recent attacks on vessels in the eastern Black Sea have disrupted Russia’s grain shipments, too.
Russia is the world’s largest wheat exporter – but according to a Moscow-based analytics company, 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.
On Wednesday, 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.
