Russia blocks off Ukraine's Black Sea coastline War in Ukraine The battleground

LVIV (Ukraine) • Russia has established a distant blockade of Ukraine's Black Sea coast, isolating its neighbour from international maritime trade, Britain's defence ministry said.

The Russian blockade affects goods entering and exiting Ukraine, which relies heavily on its coastline for trade, with more than half of its exports and imports travelling by sea.

Russia also depends on the Black Sea as a major trade route for access to Europe and the rest of the world, and Moscow sees control of the large inland sea as being of high strategic and economic value.

The British defence ministry on Sunday said Russian naval forces were continuing their missile strikes against targets in Ukraine.

The Russian navy could conduct further amphibious landing operations in the coming weeks, the ministry said in its intelligence update posted on Twitter.

The Black Sea's warm waters provide Russia with critical ice-free maritime access year-round as well as transit routes to other waterways, including the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.

Moscow's annexation of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 allowed it to establish a dominating presence in the Black Sea, militarising the region by stationing its warships in the waters and taking over or sinking Ukraine's naval vessels parked there.

Meanwhile, on land in Ukraine yesterday, heavy fighting was reported on multiple fronts.

Air raid sirens wailed across the capital, Kyiv, as firefighters tackled the remains of a blaze at a residential building that had come under heavy Russian shelling the previous night.

The bombardment of the apartment block killed at least one person and left three injured, officials said. A second person was killed by falling debris after a missile strike on another part of the city.

Three Russian rockets also hit the Antonov aircraft factory in Kyiv, deputy mayor Mykola Povoroznyk said.

The authorities said they were stockpiling a fortnight's worth of food for the two million people who had not yet fled from the Russian forces attempting to encircle the capital.

Regional governor Oleksiy Kuleba said front-line towns nearby were being evacuated for the fifth day yesterday.

"The ceasefire in our region is holding, albeit it is very conditional," Mr Kuleba said, adding that occasional explosions could be heard in the distance from the place he was stationed.

North-west of the capital, in the town of Irpin, an American journalist was shot and killed by Russian forces, and another journalist was wounded, according to the regional police chief.

In the west, cities saw renewed air strikes, while Chernihiv in the north-east faced heavy shelling.

Interior Ministry official Vadym Denyenko said Ukrainian forces were counter-attacking in the eastern Kharkiv region and around the southern town of Mykolayiv.

Russia has denied targeting civilians in what it describes as a "special operation" to demilitarise and "denazify" Ukraine.

Kyiv and its Western allies call Moscow's move a baseless pretext for a war of choice.

While Russian troops have yet to seize the capital, thousands of people have already died in other occupied or encircled towns and villages since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine on Feb 24.

More than 2,500 residents of the southern port of Mariupol had been killed, presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said.

A pregnant woman pictured being evacuated from a bombed maternity unit there last week died, according to the foreign ministry.

The Russian invasion has sent more than 2.8 million people fleeing across Ukraine's borders and trapped hundreds of thousands in besieged cities.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday condemned a Russian attack on a large Ukrainian military base near the border with Nato member Poland, which killed 35 people and wounded 134, according to local officials.

"We condemn the Russian Federation's missile attack on the International Centre for Peacekeeping and Security in Yavoriv, close to Ukraine's border with Poland," Mr Blinken wrote on Twitter.

"The brutality must stop."

Russia said up to 180 "foreign mercenaries" died in that attack and a large number of foreign weapons were destroyed.

Western officials said the attack at Nato's doorstep was not merely a geographic expansion of Moscow's invasion but a shift of tactics in a war that many already fear might metastasise into a larger European conflict.

"He's expanding the number of targets," US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"He's trying to cause damage in every part of the country."

REUTERS