A Russian missile hit a civilian vessel carrying grain from Ukraine that had already left Ukrainian waters in the Black Sea, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday.

Foreign minister Andrii Sybiha called the strike “a brazen attack on freedom of navigation and global food security”.

Zelensky said the vessel was on its way to Egypt. Zelensky said there were no casualties.

“Ukraine’s food deliveries to African and Middle Eastern countries are critical,” Zelensky said in a post on X.

“We will continue to make every effort to safeguard our ports, the Black Sea, and food exports to global markets. Wheat and food security should never be targets for missiles.”

An industry source told Reuters the grain vessel was struck in Romanian waters near the mouth of the Danube river in the Black Sea overnight.

Dmytro Pletenchuk, a spokesman for the Ukrainian navy, told Reuters the grain vessel was not in Ukraine’s grain corridor at time of the strike. He said the vessel was in Romania’s maritime economic zone.

Ukraine is exporting about four million tonnes of grain a month via its Black Sea shipping corridor, which was set up in August 2023 after Russia pulled back from the Black Sea Grain Initiative brokered by the UN and Turkey.

Ukraine’s corridor hugs the western Black Sea coast near Romania and Bulgaria.

Ukraine is one of the world’s leading grain producers and exporters.

Kursk offensive

Zelensky said on Thursday that Ukrainian forces had anticipated Moscow’s counteroffensive in the Russian region of Kursk, his first comments on the pushback this week more than a month after Ukraine’s cross-border incursion.

Ukraine’s troops captured an enclave of western Russian territory in a surprise raid that began in early August, a move aimed at wresting the battlefield initiative from Russia including by diverting Moscow’s forces from the eastern front.

Its forces made rapid initial gains before stalling, while the situation around the eastern Ukrainian town of Pokrovsk, which has been the focus of Russia’s main offensive operations in recent weeks, remained perilous.

“The Russians have begun counter-offensive actions. It is going according to our Ukrainian plan,” Zelensky told a news conference in Kyiv with Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda.

A Russian commander said on Wednesday that his soldiers had taken back control of about 10 settlements in Kursk region in a counterattack. Reuters has not been able to independently verify the battlefield reports on either side.

Zelensky repeated earlier assertions that Ukraine had also noticed a buildup of forces across the border with Belarus, Russia’s main ally in its full-scale war on Ukraine.

“We have seen it for a long time — this process is under control,” he said. His comments came as fighting continued on several fronts.