The Manila Times

Grain vessel sails through Istanbul

iSTANBUL, Turkey: The first shipment of grain from Ukraine since its invasion by Russia five months ago sailed through Istanbul on Wednesday under a landmark deal designed to help alleviate a global food crisis sparked by the war.

The Sierra Leone-flagged Razoni’s voyage from the Black Sea port of Odesa to Lebanon is being watched closely for signs of how the first agreement signed by Moscow and Kyiv since the invasion holds.

A deal brokered by Turkey and the United Nations last month lifted a Russian naval blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea cities and set terms for millions of tons of wheat and other grain to start flowing from filled silos and ports.

Ukraine exports roughly half of the sunflower oil used on the world market and is a major grain supplier.

An almost complete halt to its exports helped push up global food prices and make imports prohibitively expensive in some of the world’s poorest countries.

The Razoni took 26,000 tons of corn through a specially designated corridor in the mine-infested waters of the Black Sea before reaching the northern edge of the Bosphorus Strait on Tuesday.

A team of 20 inspectors from the two warring parties, the UN and Turkey strapped on orange helmets and boarded the ship on Wednesday morning for a mandated inspection that officials said lasted less than 90 minutes.

The ship’s passage is being overseen by an international team that includes Russian and Ukrainian officials in Istanbul.

“This marks the conclusion of an initial ‘proof of concept’ operation to execute the agreement” between Russian, Turkey, Ukraine and the UN, the team said after the ship was cleared.

The 186-meter (610-foot)-long vessel now moves on to the Sea of Marmara and the Aegean before it is set to reach the coast of Lebanon in the coming days.

Kyiv says at least 16 more grain ships are waiting to depart.

But it also accuses Russia of stealing Ukrainian grain in territories seized by the Kremlin’s forces, then shipping it to allied countries, such as Syria.

Turkey’s hopes that the deal could help build trust and lead to ceasefire talks have so far ended in disappointment.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to push for direct ceasefire negotiations when he meets his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin at the latter’s Black Sea retreat in Sochi on Friday.

“We discussed if the grain agreement can be an occasion for a sustainable ceasefire,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said after meeting his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh on Wednesday.

Assault continues

Yet, Russia continues to pound southern Ukrainian cities near the Black Sea with missiles and press on with its grinding ground assault across the east.

Moscow said on Wednesday it had also destroyed a foreign arms depot in a region near Poland that is further removed from the war.

The attack coincided with Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau’s visit to Kyiv.

Kyiv has launched mandatory evacuations from the eastern Donetsk region — now bearing the brunt of Russia’s offensive — because the government does not expect to be able to provide it with heat in the cold winter months.

Ukrainian forces have been pressing a counter-offensive to drive out the Russians from the southern Kherson region that they seized in the first days of the war, near the Kremlin-annexed Crimea peninsula.

The Ukrainian presidency’s office said it had “liberated” seven more villages in the southern region while 53 remained under Russian control.

Ukraine has been bolstered by more supplies of Western weapons, particularly long-range rockets, ahead of the planned push to retake the city of Kherson.

These include longer-range ammunition for increasingly important High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (Himars) and other pieces of artillery.

Ukraine is using the Himars and similar Western systems to smash Russian arms depots and break down its lines of ground communication across the war zone.

The Russians have been unable to seize any major village or city since gaining full control of the Donbas war zone’s smaller Luhansk region in early July.

Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy told US President Joe Biden in a message that “the word ‘Himars’ has become almost synonymous with the word ‘justice’ for our country.”

Americas And Emea

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2022-08-05T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-08-05T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://digitaledition.manilatimes.net/article/281917366842113

The Manila Times