As a grain shipment heads for Lebanon, fighting escalates on many fronts.

A ship loaded with Ukrainian corn was heading for an inspection in Turkish waters on Tuesday, a first under the provisions of a recent grain deal that opened Ukrainian ports to exports after a five-month wartime Russian blockade.

If the trip is runs smoothly and the ship reaches its delivery destination - the port of Tripoli in Lebanon - this would represent an important step towards restoring the flow of grain from Ukraine, one of the world's pre-war breadbaskets. This would help ease grain shortages and lower prices around the world, although it alone cannot address the causes of the current global hunger crisis, which includes conflict elsewhere and climate disruption.

But the grain deal, which took months to negotiate, could easily fall apart. The ship, the Razoni, is passing through a war zone, risking attack or accident, and breach of trust or disagreement between inspectors and officials from the four sides to the arrangement - Ukraine, Russia, the United Nations States and Turkey - could once again freeze ships in ports.

And even if Razoni's crossing of the Black Sea raised hopes of a some cooperation between fighters, fighting intensified on several fronts in Ukraine.

Preparing a counter-offensive in the southern Kherson region, Ukraine used long-range precision weapons, recently supplied by the West, to disrupt Russian supply lines and logistics. Ukrainian forces attacked Russian command and control centers, striking supply routes, trying to isolate Russian forces in pockets, and drafting Ukrainian saboteurs from behind enemy lines.

On Monday, Ukrainian officials said that using US-supplied artillery rockets, their forces blew up a Russian train carrying troops and equipment to reinforce positions in the south of Ukraine, killing dozens of soldiers and destroying many wagons.

"According to intelligence data, all drivers and engineers of the railway company Russians, who were transporting military goods from Crimea to the Kherson region, were killed,” said Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to the Interior Ministry. .

Although his claims could not be independently verified, video of an explosion and satellite images of the aftermath provided evidence that the Ukrainians had hit a Russian train along one of the two main railway lines connecting Crimea to southern Ukraine.

The Ukrainian army also said on Monday that it destroyed in recent weeks at least 15 ammunition depots in the south, affecting supplies enough to force Russia to use surface-to-air missiles to strike ground targets.

The Pentagon said last week that Ukraine was using Western weapons to increasing effect. On Monday, the Biden administration announced another round of support for Ukraine: $550 million in military aid, including more ammunition for 155 millimeter Howitzer artillery pieces and artillery rocket systems mobility aids, or HIMARS, which the United States has already provided.

But for all its slow or shaky progress in the war, Russia retains vast advantages in the size of its arsenal, and it now pursues a strategy that has won the province of Luhansk to the east, covering the towns with overwhelming artillery fire and seeking to reposition ground forces to push forward.