According to a source in Ukraine’s military intelligence, Russia is preparing attacks on storage and processing facilities for agricultural products in Ukraine. As the news agency Ukrinform reported on Tuesday, 10 November, citing this source, the plan envisages attacks on silos, production facilities for sunflower and other vegetable oils, dairies, butter factories, meat-processing plants, poultry plants and other food producers.
The news agency Interfax-Ukraine reported, citing a source in Ukraine’s defence intelligence service, that possible targets are grain stores and facilities for grain storage and processing, plants for sunflower and other vegetable oils, milk- and butter-processing plants, meat-processing facilities, poultry farms and other companies in the sector, as the English-language news outlet NV reported. According to these reports, food-industry facilities in foreign ownership could also be affected.
“Russia’s goal is to destabilise the situation in Ukraine through attacks on food security, and through a further information campaign to demoralise society to inflict significant damage on our country’s economy, which is supposed to lead to a decline in foreign-currency revenues,” Ukrinform quoted the source in military intelligence as saying. Moscow’s plan aims to harm Ukraine’s food industry and thereby increase Russian exports of agricultural products – in particular to countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
In the night to 10 November, according to the Ukrainian air force, Russia attacked Ukraine with an Iskander-M missile and 162 drones, including 96 jet-powered Shahed drones as well as Gerbera drones and decoys, as NV reported. Air defence shot down or suppressed 135 drones. Impacts were recorded at 19 locations, and debris from downed drones fell at nine others. On the same morning, according to the Ukrainian railway Ukrzaliznytsia, a Russian drone hit a suburban train at a platform in Sumy region; the train crew was in a shelter and no one was injured.
