Moscow, Kiev, and Ankara have reportedly agreed on a maritime grain corridor. Ukrainian wheat may soon be headed to world markets as a result of a proposal that would involve Turkish ships demining the waters around Odessa and sharing escort duties with the Russian Navy, according to multiple outlets. Food shortages in a number of countries in Africa and the Middle East, including Turkey, could be helped by the grain corridor.
According to Bloomberg, Kiev is negotiating with the UN on how to export grain, and is skeptical of a tentative deal between Russia and Turkey, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
UN UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths arrived in Moscow on June 3 for talks about restoring the grain shipments from the Black Sea ports, according to Reuters.
The Russian outlet Izvestiya has quoted a high-ranking informed source to give some details of the proposed scheme. It would see the Turkish navy clearing a corridor through Ukrainian sea mines from the Black Sea port of Odessa and escort the cargo ships to international waters. At this point, Russian Navy vessels would take over and escort the freighters to the Bosporus.
A high-ranking UN official confirmed the participation of Izvestiya and said that the grain corridor roadmap should be formalized later this week, when Russian foreign and defense ministers visit Turkey.
The source said that the proposed arrangement only applies to Odessa at this point and the exact route of the grain ships remains to be mapped out.
Ukraine is responsible for around 9% of the world's grain exports. Russia claims that Kiev s military mined the approaches to Odessa and other Black Sea ports in February. More than 22.5 million tons were stuck on cargo vessels unable to depart, according to 22.5 million tons.
It wasn't us who mined the approaches to the ports. Ukraine did, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Russian TV channel Rossiya 24 on Friday, that Moscow would guarantee the peaceful passage of the grain ships if Kiev cleared the mines and allowed them to leave. He also offered other routes to export grain, either through the Russian-controlled ports of Berdyansk and Mariupol, via the Danube, or overland through Belarus and Poland.
So far the Ukrainian grain has been exported using trains and trucks through the EU member states and Moldova, but we haven't seen any of it reach the market, said Izvestiya s source. That makes us wonder if the EU isn't taking the Ukrainian grain as payment for weapons deliveries. Zelensky blamed the Russian naval blockade of the Ukrainian coast for the problem, saying that Moscow deliberately created the problem to make things difficult for Europe and deny Ukraine millions of dollars in revenue it needs.
Russia attacked the neighboring state in late February, after Ukraine failed to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German and French Minsk Protocol was designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.
The Kremlin has demanded that Ukraine be officially declared as a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists that the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied that it was planning to take the two republics by force.