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.
“What’s the difference between grain and iron ore?”
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Moscow and Kyiv agreed in Istanbul last month to resume shipments of wheat and other grain from Ukrainian ports for the first time since Russia invaded its neighbour in February.
The first ship, loaded with 26,000 tonnes of maize, set off from Odesa on Monday for the Lebanese port of Tripoli.
The Sierra Leone-flagged Razoni was cleared for passage through the Bosphorus Strait by a team that included Russian and Ukrainian inspectors on Wednesday.
The ship’s passage is being overseen by an international team that includes officials from Türkiye, the United Nations and the two warring parties.
The team said in a statement the first ship’s successful passage offered “proof of concept” that the agreement can hold.
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‘Relief for world’ as first Ukraine grain ship since start of war departs Odesa
Russia and Ukraine are major suppliers of wheat and other grain.
The halt of almost all deliveries from Ukraine has sent global food prices soaring, making imports prohibitively expensive for some of the world’s poorest nations.
Meanwhile, a ship that Ukraine says is carrying grain stolen by Russian forces left Lebanon on Thursday for neighbouring Syria.
“I allowed the ship to leave Lebanon towards Syria after judicial authorities and all probes were done in accordance with the Lebanese rules that preserve our country’s integrity and sovereignty,” Lebanese Transport Minister Ali Hamiyeh told dpa.
The Syrian-flagged Laodicea had docked at Lebanon’s Tripoli port on July 27 with some 5,000 tonnes of barley and 5,000 tonnes of flour on board.
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The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry says the goods were pilfered from its territory.
The ship had earlier left the Russian port of Kavkaz in the Kerch Strait.
According to the ship-tracking website MarineTraffic, it headed for the Mediterranean port of Tartus in Syria on Thursday.
It had previously stopped in the duty-free area of Lebanon to offer grains for sale to local traders, Lebanese sources said.
After protests from the Ukrainian government and its embassy in Beirut, Lebanese authorities seized the ship for 72 hours starting on Monday.
However, the order was lifted after samples taken by Lebanese judicial authorities did not find any evidence of stolen grains or other violations of the country’s law.
Bloomberg, Agence France-Presse and dpa
