Ukraine said on Monday it expects to resume grain exports “as of this week”, for the first time since the start of the war, after the signing of an agreement with Moscow and despite the bombardment on Saturday by the army Russian from the great port of Odessa, vital for this trade.
“We expect the agreement to start working in the next few days and we expect a coordination center to be set up in Istanbul in the next few days. We are preparing everything to start this week,” Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov told reporters.
According to him, the main obstacle to the resumption of exports is the risk of Russian bombing, as illustrated by the strike that targeted the port of Odessa on the Black Sea on Saturday.
Russia on Monday defended its strikes on Odessa, saying they targeted military targets and did not hinder the resumption of Ukrainian grain exports. Moscow has claimed to have destroyed in this port in southern Ukraine a warship as well as missiles supplied by the United States.
The bombardments on Odessa “target only the military infrastructure. It is not at all related to the infrastructure used for the implementation of the agreement on grain exports,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
“That’s why it can’t and shouldn’t interfere with the start of the loading process,” he added.
Guarantee security
Oleksandre Kubrakov for his part called on the guarantors of the agreement, Turkey and the UN, to guarantee the safety of the Ukrainian convoys. “If the parties do not guarantee security, it will not work,” he warned.
Deputy Infrastructure Minister Yuri Vaskov said the port of Chornomorsk (southwest) would be the first to operate for exports, followed by that of Odessa, then that of Pivdenny (southwest) .
The agreement signed Friday in Istanbul between Moscow and kyiv, under the aegis of the UN, provides for “secure corridors” for the circulation in the Black Sea of merchant ships.
It should make it possible to export 20 to 25 million tonnes of cereals blocked in Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion on February 24, and to facilitate Russian agricultural exports, thus reducing the risk of a food crisis in the world.
90% of wheat, corn and sunflower exports from Ukraine were carried out by sea and mainly via Odessa, the main Ukrainian port on the Black Sea, which concentrated 60% of the country’s port activity.
Ukraine and Russia account for around 30% of world wheat exports and the war has led to a spike in cereal and oil prices, which has hit the African continent in particular hard.
The head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, is precisely leading an African tour to reassure the countries heavily dependent on Ukrainian cereals.
“Nothing appears in the commitments made by Russia, in particular within the framework of the agreements signed on July 22 in Istanbul, which would prohibit us from continuing the special military operation, by destroying military infrastructures” Ukrainian, he insisted Monday at a press conference in Oyo, Congo.
No respite on the front
On the ground, the war knows no respite on the fronts of Mykolaiv (south), in the region of Kharkiv (north-east), the second largest city in Ukraine, in that of Kherson (south) and in the two pro-Russian separatist territories of Donetsk and Lugansk in the east.
In Kherson, which the Russians seized on March 3, the situation “remains critical” with shortages of medicines, food and hygiene products, Dmytro Boutry, head of the administration, told the press on Monday. regional military.
He also assured that Ukrainian forces had regained control of 44 villages in the region and targeted three bridges to complicate Russian logistics.
In this context, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on his compatriots on Sunday evening to “be united and work together for victory”, before “celebrating for the first time Ukraine’s Sovereignty Day, 28 July “.
His German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, considered that the Russian war in Ukraine was also “a war against the unity of Europe”, as the first German Gepard anti-aircraft guns promised by Germany arrived in Ukraine.
“We are expecting 15 Gepards. Three of them arrived in Ukraine today. They are already at the disposal of the armed forces of Ukraine,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov announced on Monday, quoted by the Interfax-Ukraine agency.
“Polish PT-91 Twardy tanks have arrived in Ukraine, we are very grateful to our Polish allies,” Andriy Iermak, head of the Ukrainian presidential administration, wrote on Twitter on Monday.
As the war entered its sixth month on Sunday, Ukraine has also resolved to give up the next Eurovision: the organization of the 2023 edition of the extravagant song contest returns to the United Kingdom, arrived second and at the forefront of support for kyiv.