UNITED NATIONS — UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in Ukraine on Thursday, a UN spokesman said, and on Friday visit the Black Sea port of Odesa, where grain exports have resumed under a UN-brokered deal.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Tuesday that Guterres would meet Zelenskiy in Lviv in western Ukraine and discuss the situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, along with finding a political solution to the conflict with Russia.
Ukraine and Russia have blamed each other for shelling near the eastern Ukraine nuclear plant, which Russian forces took over in the early stages of their Feb. 24 invasion. The plant is still being operated by Ukrainian technicians.
The United Nations has said it can help facilitate a visit by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to Zaporizhzhia from Kyiv, but Russia said any mission going through Ukraine’s capital was too dangerous.
On Saturday, Guterres will visit the Joint Coordination Center in Istanbul, which is made up of Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish and UN officials overseeing the Black Sea exports of Ukraine grain and fertilizer.
Three Black Sea ports were unblocked last month under a deal between Moscow and Kyiv, brokered by the United Nations and Turkey, making it possible to send hundreds of thousands of tons of Ukrainian grain to buyers. The United Nations said the deal aims to ease a worsening global food crisis.
Russia blamed saboteurs for explosions at one of its military bases in Moscow-annexed Crimea while Ukraine hinted it was responsible as its officials said their strategy was to destroy supply lines supporting Russia’s invasion.
The blasts on Tuesday engulfed an ammunition depot at a military base in the north of the Crimean peninsula, disrupting trains and forcing the evacuation of 2,000 people from a village, according to Russian officials and news agencies.
Plumes of smoke were later seen at a second Russian military base in central Crimea, Russia’s Kommersant newspaper said. The blasts and smoke followed last week’s explosions at a Russian military air base in western Crimea that destroyed eight warplanes.
Russia’s defense ministry said the explosions at the ammunition depot were “a result of sabotage.” The Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014, is the main supply route for its forces in southern Ukraine and the base for its Black Sea fleet.
Ukraine did not confirm or deny responsibility for the explosions though its officials cheered Russia’s setbacks.
Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak and chief of staff Andriy Yermak both exulted on social media at “demilitarization,” an apparent mocking reference to the word Russia uses to justify its invasion.
Podolyak told Britain’s Guardian newspaper later that Ukraine’s strategy was to destroy Russian “logistics, supply lines and ammunition depots and other objects of military infrastructure.”
“It’s creating a chaos within their own forces,” he said.
