The Russian strike that hit the Ukrainian port of Odessa on Saturday cast doubt on the application of the agreement which was to allow the resumption of Ukrainian grain exports. But despite this pitfall, Ukraine has “begin [les convois] from this week”assured the Ukrainian Minister of Infrastructure Oleksandre Kubrakov, Monday, July 25.
“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”, said Oleksandr Kubrakov. The ships will be able to transport cereals, but also fertilizers, he announced.
However, the Minister presented the risk of Russian bombing as the main obstacle to the resumption of exports. “If the parties do not guarantee security, it will not work”he warned, in an appeal to Turkey and the UN, the guarantors of the agreement.
Moscow, for its part, maintained its line of defense regarding the strike on Odessa. These missiles were aimed “only military infrastructureassured the spokesman of the Kremlin Dmitry Peskov. “It is not at all related to the infrastructure used for the implementation of the grain export agreement. (…) That is why it cannot and should not hinder the start of the process of loading”he added during his daily telephone briefing to the press.
The agreement signed Friday in Istanbul provides in particular for the establishment of secure corridors to allow the circulation in the Black Sea of merchant ships and the export of 20 to 25 million tonnes of grain cereals blocked in Ukraine. The export of wheat, corn and sunflower from Ukraine was 90% by sea and mainly through Odessa, the main Ukrainian port in the Black Sea, which concentrated 60% of the country’s port activity.
The first exports will be from Chornomorsk, south of Odessa, clarified the vice-Minister of Ukrainian Infrastructure, Yuri Vaskov, before the resumption of convoys from the port of Odessa, then that of Pivdenny. “In the next two weeks we will be technically ready to carry out grain exports from all Ukrainian ports”he said.