TWO PEOPLE HAVE been admitted to hospital after a Russian drone barrage against port infrastructure in Ukraine’s Odesa region, officials have said.

The attack comes a day before Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to meet his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss the resumption of food shipments from Ukraine under a Black Sea grain agreement Moscow broke off from in July.

Russian forces fired 25 Iranian-made Shahed drones along the Danube River in the early hours of Sunday, 22 of which were shot down by air defences, the Ukrainian air force said on Telegram.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, described the assault as part of a Russian drive “to provoke a food crisis and hunger in the world”.

Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 03 September 2023

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Moscow has not commented on the attack.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, two people were killed and two others hurt during Russian shelling today on the village of Vuhledar in the Donetsk area.

Artillery fire hit eight settlements across the region, Ukraine’s National Police wrote on Telegram.

Ukrainian prosecutors also said today that they have opened a war crimes investigation into the death of a police officer killed by Russian shelling on the town of Seredyna-Buda on Saturday afternoon.

Two other police officers and one civilian were hurt during the attack, which hit Ukraine’s north-eastern Sumy region.