Occupied Ukrainian city facing ‘disaster’ as Russia urged to end grain blockade

Ukrainian officials have said residents of a devastated city in the occupied Luhansk region are facing a humanitarian disaster, and accused Moscow of playing “hunger games” with the world by blocking the export of grain through the country’s Black Sea ports.

At a gathering of top diplomats from G20 states in Indonesia, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov reportedly walked out of a meeting in response to criticism of his country’s bloody invasion of Ukraine from western counterparts.

Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai said “fierce battles” were continuing in some villages in the region, days after Russia claimed full control of the area after capturing the neighbouring cities of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk.

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He accused Russian troops of firing indiscriminately on any building where they suspect Ukrainian soldiers could be positioned, and said they had “completely destroyed all the critical infrastructure and they are unable to repair anything”.

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“There is no centralised water, gas or electricity supply…The sewage is accumulating. Add to that the current [high] air temperature outside. And the stench from the dead – those who were buried in yards, and many remain in apartments and entrances,” he wrote on social media. “Sievierodonetsk is witnessing a humanitarian disaster.”

Thousands of civilians have been killed and millions displaced in what the Kremlin calls a “special operation” to protect Russian speakers in the Donbas area – which comprises the neighbouring Luhansk and Donetsk regions – from violent Ukrainian nationalists.

Russian forces are now expected to push towards Slovyansk, Kramatorsk and Bakhmut, government-held cities in Donetsk that have been hit by deadly shelling in recent days. In Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, which is to the north of Donbas, Russian rockets killed at least three people and injured five on Thursday.

“‘Aggressors’, ‘invaders’, ‘occupiers’ – we heard a lot of things today,” Mr Lavrov said after reportedly walking out of morning and afternoon G20 sessions, where he complained that western diplomats “strayed almost immediately, as soon as they took the floor, to frenzied criticism of the Russian Federation in connection with the situation in Ukraine”.

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German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said his exit showed “clearly that he’s not interested in international co-operation or dialogue with the other G19 partners”.

“It underscores that the Russian government is not showing a millimetre of willingness to talk, particularly on the important question of how we will grapple with the global food crisis,” she told German television.

Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba told the G20 by video link that Russia was “essentially playing hunger games with the world by keeping the naval blockade of Ukrainian ports” and views “dependence of other countries on any type of resources as weakness and an invitation to use this dependence as a leverage to Russia’s gain”.

“Adding insult to injury, Russia steals Ukrainian grain and bombs Ukrainian granaries,” he added.

Moscow denies those allegations and blames food supply fears on western sanctions against Russia and Ukraine’s failure to demine its coastal waters. Turkish efforts to broker a deal on Black Sea shipping appear to have stalled, and Kyiv criticised Turkey this week for not impounding a Russian vessel that was allegedly carrying stolen Ukrainian grain.