On Friday, the United Nations warned against escalating military action in the Black Sea, after Russia said its navy had carried out a live-fire maneuver there after declaring that ships bound for Ukraine would be considered potential military targets.
Officials said Russian forces bombed the Black Sea port of Odessa for the fourth consecutive day and hit grain silos.
“Threats to target civilian ships in the Black Sea are unacceptable,” Rosemary DiCarlo, senior representative for political affairs, told the United Nations Security Council, of which Russia is a member.
After withdrawing from a deal to facilitate safe shipment of grain from Ukraine, Russia is targeting the Western-backed country’s grain supplies and critical infrastructure at its southern ports including Odessa and Mykolaiv.
“The Russians attacked Odessa with Kalibr cruise missiles from the Black Sea,” said regional governor Oleg Kipper.
Moscow targeted local grain silos and “destroyed 100 tons of peas and 20 tons of barley,” Kipper said, adding that two people were injured.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the impact of such attacks has gone beyond Ukraine.
“We are already seeing the negative impact on global wheat and maize prices, which is affecting everyone, especially vulnerable groups in the Global South,” Guterres said in a statement.
UNESCO, the United Nations science and culture agency, has condemned the attacks on Odessa, saying that an initial assessment “revealed damage to several museums within World Heritage properties”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin this week vowed revenge after a Ukrainian attack destroyed a bridge linking Crimea to Russia and killed two people.

In Moscow, the Defense Ministry said a boat “carried out live firing of anti-ship cruise missiles at the target ship” in the northwestern part of the Black Sea.
“The targeted ship was destroyed as a result of a missile strike,” the ministry said in a statement.
The ministry added that the fleet and ships’ aviation “took measures to isolate the area temporarily closed to navigation, and also implemented a set of measures to detain the violating ship.”
The Russian and Chinese navies have also conducted joint exercises in the Sea of ​​Japan.
The Kremlin said on Wednesday that it would consider cargo ships bound for Ukraine via the Black Sea as possible military targets.
Ukraine also warned that from Friday it might consider ships destined for Russian ports to be “carrying military cargo, with all the risks associated with it.”
Ukraine has previously said it would be ready to continue grain exports from its southern ports after Moscow exits the deal.
Kiev called on the United Nations and neighboring countries to secure safe passage for the shipments through joint patrols.

In Kiev, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky sacked his country’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, Vadym Prystaiko, after he criticized the president’s response to a row over British military aid.
Prystaiko’s dismissal came after he criticized Zelensky’s sarcastic response to suggestions from British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace that Ukraine should show more gratitude for arms supplies from its allies.
The spat began when Wallace told reporters at a NATO summit in Vilnius this month that Britain was not Amazon for delivering weapons to Ukraine, and suggested Kiev could express more “gratitude”.
Zelensky responded at a press conference, saying he knew of no other way to make Ukraine’s gratitude clear. “We can get up in the morning and express our gratitude to the minister personally,” he said.
On the battlefield, the White House said, Ukrainian forces have begun using US-supplied cluster munitions, as Kiev seeks momentum in its grinding counter-offensive.
Washington provided arms to Ukraine for the first time earlier this month as Kiev tries to expel entrenched Russian forces and retake territory lost in the early months of Moscow’s military operation last year.
Many countries ban the weapons, which disperse up to several hundred small explosive charges that can remain unexploded on the ground, because of the long-term risks they pose to civilians.
Moscow’s forces are spread across large swathes of southern and eastern Ukraine, and for more than a month in Kiev’s counter-offensive, large parts of the front appear frozen.
Despite the new weapons, many civilians were killed in northern and eastern towns on Friday due to Russian strikes, according to local officials.
In the village of Druzhba in the eastern Donetsk region, two children — a 10-year-old boy and his 16-year-old sister — were killed in Russian bombing, the region’s governor, Pavlo Kirilenko, said on Telegram.
Two people were killed when a cultural center was bombed in the northern Chernigov region, according to Governor Vyacheslav Chaos.
Putin praised Russian forces in a televised broadcast on Friday, adding that Ukrainian forces had suffered “heavy losses” and that their counter-offensive had yielded “no results”.
A senior presidential adviser in Kiev told AFP this week that the process would be “long and difficult”.