By Dan Peleschuk and Anna Pruchnicka
KYIV, Aug 28 (Reuters) - Recent Russian air attacks have destroyed around 90% of retailers' food logistics, Kyiv's agricultural minister said on Friday, revealing the scope of Moscow's mounting attacks on Ukrainian logistics.
Both countries have stepped up strikes in recent weeks on economic targets like major retailers, with Russia targeting warehouses for Ukraine's premier supermarket chains, top postal service and home-goods stores.
"As of today, roughly speaking,
90% of food logistics operated by retail chains have been destroyed, but that doesn't mean Ukrainians will be left without food," farm minister Taras Vysotskyi was cited by the Ukrinform agency as saying.
His comments to reporters in Kyiv are the most frank official assessment of the damage Russia's escalating strikes have brought on Ukraine's increasingly fragile economy in the fifth year of war.
In recent weeks, fresh fruit, vegetables, sugar, milk products and other food have occasionally disappeared from the shelves in some supermarkets in Kyiv as a result of strikes on logistics depots of food retailers.
Ukraine's long-range attacks have targeted Russia's top online retailers in addition to energy infrastructure and oil tankers in the Black and Azov Seas.
ATTACKS ON LOGISTICS
Over the past two days, Russia has been launching jet-powered drones almost non-stop across Ukraine, particularly at Kyiv and the surrounding region, where the situation is the most difficult, Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi said.
In the past day, 16 people had been killed across Ukraine in various attacks, he said on Telegram.
"They are hitting civilian businesses, food warehouses, hypermarkets, postal terminals, warehouses where books are stored," Vyhivskyi said.
In Kyiv region, Russian drone attacks on Friday damaged more than a dozen warehouse premises, killing one person, said Governor Tymur Tkachenko.
Strikes also destroyed sorting centres belonging to Ukraine's top private courier Nova Poshta near Kyiv and in the northern city of Sumy, the company said.
In the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, a Russian drone tore into major home-improvement store Epicenter, wounding at least four people, Governor Ivan Fedorov said.
Russia also attacked a shopping centre in the city of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said, the second such attack there in two days.
Also on Friday, a Russian drone attack destroyed a warehouse in Kyiv region for a major book retailer that shipped thousands of titles per day, the company said.
GOAL IS TO 'PARALYSE' KYIV
Frequent air-raid sirens blared throughout Kyiv into Friday afternoon, a day after an hours-long missile and drone attack on Ukraine that targeted major retailers and consumer logistics in Kyiv and elsewhere.
Friday's attacks appeared aimed at prolonging the snarl-up sparked by strikes a day earlier, which delayed trains across several regions and left passengers stranded for long periods.
"The enemy is launching small numbers of jet-powered UAVs in waves with the aim of paralysing Kyiv," said Andriy Kovalenko, head of Ukraine's Centre for Countering Disinformation (CCD), a branch of the National Security Council.
"The aim - to wear down the air defences and the population."
Ukraine's state railway said on Friday that delays were gradually decreasing, but that the effects of frequent strikes and air-raid alerts would be felt at least another day.
Kyiv spent nearly 15 hours under air-raid alert on Thursday, according to Ukraine's foreign ministry.
(Reporting by Anna Pruchnicka in Gdansk, additional reporting Yuliia Dysa, Jekaterīna Golubkova in Tokyo; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus, Christopher Cushing, Alexandra Hudson)
