Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said, in contrast to earlier statements, that Russia is seeking to overthrow the Ukrainian government.
"We will definitely help the Ukrainian people to free themselves from the regime that is absolutely anti-people and anti-history," Lavrov said in Cairo on Sunday. The Russian and Ukrainian people would live together in the future, he added.
In recent days, the Russian leadership has publicly toughened its position in the Ukraine war. On Wednesday, Lavrov threatened to occupy further territories outside the eastern Donbass region where most of the fighting is currently concentrated.
In view of the Western deliveries of weapons and their greater range, it is necessary to push Ukraine's troops further away from the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces which together make up the Donbass and which Moscow has recognised as independent.
With his announcement that he wants to change the political leadership in Kyiv, Lavrov also contradicts his own statements in April. "We have no plans to change the regime in Ukraine," the Russian chief diplomat said at the time in an interview with the television channel India Today. It was up to the Ukrainians to decide under which leadership they wanted to live, Lavrov asserted at the time.
Lavrov's African tour comes as the West accused Russia of undermining a deal to secure the safe export of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea with missile attacks on the port city of Odessa on Saturday.
The Defence Ministry in Moscow had admitted to firing at military infrastructure at the port, a move which triggered fears that the grain agreement would collapse. Defence officials later said the attack was intended to destroy weapons supplied by the United States.
Saturday's attack triggered outrage as it came shortly after a deal between Ukraine and Russia to resume exports of millions of tons of trapped Ukrainian grain, including from Odessa.
Russia fired missiles at a ship repair facility, the ministry said on Sunday, saying the strikes had destroyed a Ukrainian warship and a storehouse of US-supplied Harpoon missiles that Kyiv's fighters have used in the past to inflict heavy losses on the Russian Navy.
Only hours earlier the agreement reached on the exports by the UN, Russia, Ukraine and Turkey had been greeted as a glimmer of hope in the war which has exacerbated a global food crisis.
The agreement involves a promise by Moscow not to fire on ships passing through a sea corridor to export food and other goods.
Lavrov confirmed that the international agreement on the safe export of Ukrainian grain remained in place and that Russian and Turkish forces would jointly provide security for the ships on the open sea.
"When the ships sail towards Ukrainian ports to take on new food cargoes, there will also be checks to ensure that no one brings weapons to Ukrainian ports," Lavrov said.
He also noted that two documents were signed in Istanbul last Friday - one on grain exports from Ukraine, the other on the United Nations advocating easier exports of Russian food and fertilizer.
Moscow complains that the sanctions imposed by the EU and the US in the wake of Russia's war against Ukraine are now slowing down exports, although food is not directly affected.
Lavrov said UN Secretary-General António Guterres would himself seek to have "illegal restrictions" lifted. "We hope that he succeeds," Lavrov said, noting that it was up to the West to ease the situation on the food market by lifting sanctions that hinder Russian exports.
Moscow has repeatedly denied it is responsible for the food crisis which has emerged from the conflict between two of the world's biggest wheat producers.
In Ukraine, preparations for the grain transport are underway despite Saturday's Russian missile attacks on the port in Odessa.
