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Russia’s Defense Ministry: Grain Coordination Center Launched in Istanbul

In this handout photo released by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, and UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, sit as Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, top left, and Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, top right, exchange documents during a signing ceremony at Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul, Turkey, Friday, July 22, 2022. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
In this handout photo released by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, and UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, sit as Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, top left, and Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, top right, exchange documents during a signing ceremony at Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul, Turkey, Friday, July 22, 2022. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
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Russia’s Defense Ministry: Grain Coordination Center Launched in Istanbul

In this handout photo released by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, and UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, sit as Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, top left, and Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, top right, exchange documents during a signing ceremony at Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul, Turkey, Friday, July 22, 2022. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
In this handout photo released by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, and UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, sit as Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, top left, and Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, top right, exchange documents during a signing ceremony at Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul, Turkey, Friday, July 22, 2022. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

The Joint Coordination Center (JCC), established as part of a landmark deal to resume grain exports from Ukraine, has started work in Istanbul, Russia's defense ministry said on Tuesday

The Russian delegation to the JCC will arrive in Turkey today and begin work in a four-way format, alongside Turkey, Ukraine and the United Nations, the ministry said in a statement posted on social media.

Russia and Ukraine signed a landmark deal last Friday, brokered by Ankara and the UN, to unblock grain exports from Ukraine's Black Sea ports and ease an international food crisis.

The deal was almost immediately thrown into jeopardy after Russia fired cruise missiles on the port of Odesa, Ukraine's largest, on Saturday morning, just 12 hours after the signing ceremony in Istanbul.

But both Moscow and Kyiv have said they will try to push forward with the agreement - the first major diplomatic breakthrough in the conflict now in its sixth month.

Ukraine and Russia accounted for around a third of global wheat exports before Russia's Feb. 24 invasion.

The Russian delegation to the JCC will be headed by rear admiral Eduard Luik, Moscow said.

"The main task of Russian specialists in the JCC will be the prompt resolution of all necessary issues for the initiative to enter the stage of practical implementation," the defense ministry said.

The Kremlin on Monday called for the UN to secure the removal of curbs on Russian fertilizer and grain exports as part of the deal, saying it was still too early to say whether the agreement would be a success.

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7 Killed by Russian Attacks as Moscow Pushes Ahead in Ukraine's East

Ukrainian rescuers work at the site of a missile strike on a private building in Cherkaska Lozova, Kharkiv region, northeastern Ukraine, 31 August 2024, amid the Russian invasion. EPA/SERGEY KOZLOV
Ukrainian rescuers work at the site of a missile strike on a private building in Cherkaska Lozova, Kharkiv region, northeastern Ukraine, 31 August 2024, amid the Russian invasion. EPA/SERGEY KOZLOV
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7 Killed by Russian Attacks as Moscow Pushes Ahead in Ukraine's East

Ukrainian rescuers work at the site of a missile strike on a private building in Cherkaska Lozova, Kharkiv region, northeastern Ukraine, 31 August 2024, amid the Russian invasion. EPA/SERGEY KOZLOV
Ukrainian rescuers work at the site of a missile strike on a private building in Cherkaska Lozova, Kharkiv region, northeastern Ukraine, 31 August 2024, amid the Russian invasion. EPA/SERGEY KOZLOV

Russian shelling in the town of Chasiv Yar on Saturday killed five people, as Moscow’s troops pushed ahead in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
The attack struck a high-rise building and a private home, said regional Gov. Vadym Filaskhin, who said the victims were men aged 24 to 38. He urged the last remaining residents to leave the front-line town, which had a pre-war population of 12,000.
“Normal life has been impossible in Chasiv Yar for more than two years,” Filaskhin wrote on social media. “Do not become a Russian target — evacuate.” A further two people were killed by Russian shelling in the Kharkiv region. One victim was pulled from the rubble of a house in the village of Cherkaska Lozova, said Gov. Oleh Syniehubov, while a second woman died of her wounds while being transported to a hospital.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said it captured the town of Pivnichne, also in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. The Associated Press could not independently verify the claim.
Russian forces have been driving deeper into the partly occupied eastern region, the total capture of which is one of the Kremlin’s primary ambitions. Russia’s army is closing in on Pokrovsk, a critical logistics hub for the Ukrainian defense in the area.
At the same time, Ukraine has sent its forces into Russia’s Kursk region in recent weeks in the largest incursion onto Russian soil since World War II. The move is partly an effort to force Russia to draw troops away from the Donetsk front.
Elsewhere, the number of wounded following a Russian attack on the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Friday continued to rise.
Six people were killed, including a 14-year-old girl, when glide bombs struck five locations across the city, said regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov. Writing on social media Saturday, he said that the number of injured had risen from 47 to 96.
Syniehubov also confirmed that the 12-story apartment block that was hit by one bomb strike, setting the building ablaze and trapping at least one person on an upper floor, would be partly demolished.
Ukrainian officials have previously pointed to the Kharkiv strikes as further evidence that Western partners should scrap restrictions on what the Ukrainian military can target with donated weapons.
In an interview with CNN on Friday, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said that Kyiv had presented Washington with a list of potential long-range targets within Russia for its approval. “I hope we were heard,” he said.
He also denied speculation that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ’s decision to dismiss the commander of the country’s air force Friday was directly linked to the destruction of an F-16 warplane that Ukraine received from its Western partners four days earlier.
The order to dismiss Lt. Gen. Mykola Oleshchuk was published on the presidential website minutes before an address which saw Zelenskyy stress the need to “take care of all our soldiers.”
“This is two separate issues,” said Umerov. “At this stage, I would not connect them.”
The number of injured also continued to rise in the Russian border region of Belgorod, where five people were killed Friday by Ukrainian shelling, said Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov. He said Sunday that 46 people had been injured, of whom 37 were in the hospital, including seven children. Writing on social media, Gladkov also said that two others had been injured in Ukrainian shelling across the region.