More grain ships sail as Ukraine calls for Black Sea deal to extend to other products
- Departure of three more ships comes after the first grain ship since the start of the war left Ukraine earlier this week
- Grain shipping deal was a rare diplomatic breakthrough in the five-month conflict between Ukraine and Russia
A week after Ukraine and Russia reached an agreement for safe transit of grain vessels, Kyiv is ramping up shipments. Three more ships left Ukrainian Black Sea ports on Friday.
The Panama-flagged Navistar left Odesa for Ireland with 33,000 tonnes of grain, Turkey’s defence ministry said.
And two ships left the port of Chornomorsk – the Malta-flagged Rojen headed to Britain with 13,000 tonnes of grain, and the Türkiye-flagged Polarnet sailed towards Türkiye with 12,000 tonnes of grain.
An empty Barbados-flagged ship, the Fulmar, was headed to the port of Chornomorsk to be loaded with grain, it said.
The sailings came as Ukraine called for the grain deal to be extended to include other products, such as metals, the Financial Times reported.
“This agreement is about logistics, about the movement of vessels through the Black Sea,” Ukraine’s Deputy Economy Minister Taras Kachka told the newspaper.
