France is offering its aid this Friday to lift the blockade of the Ukrainian port of Odessa. The port is one of the main places through which cereals are exported. Since its blockage, cereal exports from Ukraine have been stopped, which has led to a global food crisis.
The security operation proposed by France is complex because access to the port of Odessa was mined. It would be necessary to find a passage corridor, and for that to obtain the information via the Ukrainians.
A world famine in prospect
“We are at the disposal of the parties so that, basically, an operation is put in place which would allow access to the port of Odessa in complete safety, that is to say to be able to allow boats to pass despite the fact that the sea is mined“, declares this Saturday an adviser to President Emmanuel Macron.
These statements come as Senegalese President Macky Sall indicates having received assurances from Vladimir Putin that the Russians would not take advantage of this to attack.
Before the crisis, 80% of Ukrainian wheat exports were transported by sea and in particular through the port of Odessa. Since the city was blocked, these exports have been completely stopped. Impossible to get them by sea.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), African and Middle Eastern countries will be the first to be affected by serious food crises. Ukrainian President Zelensky also called on Thursday for Russia’s exclusion from the FAO.
Still fighting in the south and east of the country
On the ground, Ukrainian forces said on Friday that they had bombed Russian positions in the occupied Kherson region in the south of the country.
In the Donbass, the bombardments continue to take control of two key cities: Severodonetsk and Lyssychansk. The fights are particularly intense. Up to 100 Ukrainian soldiers are killed and 500 injured every day, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said on Thursday.
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Visit of the President of the European Commission to Kyiv
On the 108th day of the war in Ukraine, the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen is on her side, arriving on Saturday in kyiv for a visit devoted to the Ukraine’s ambitions to join the European Union.
The heads of state of nine countries of central and eastern Europe (Romania, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Slovakia) met on Friday in Bucharest, to ask for a reinforcement of the eastern flank of NATO in the face of Russian aggression in Ukraine.