“Temporary corridors have been announced for commercial vessels entering and leaving Ukrainian seaports on the Black Sea,” the Ukrainian navy said in a statement.
“The corridors have been open since midnight,” Navy spokesman Oleg Tchalyk told the French agency AFP, without specifying for how long.
It was not immediately clear whether ships had already left the Ukrainian coast.
According to Oleg Tchalyk, all ships sailing from Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea will be “equipped with surveillance cameras” to make the journey “as transparent as possible”.
Ships exporting Ukrainian grain “do not pose any military threat,” the spokesman told AFP.
In mid-July, Russia terminated the agreement that had allowed the departure of Ukrainian grains from the country’s southern ports since last summer.
Grains were held up in ports due to the blockade imposed by Russia as part of the war it launched against the neighboring country on February 24, 2022.
On July 19, Moscow warned that any ship entering Ukrainian ports would be considered a potential target.
Kiev responded the next day, saying the same would apply to Russian ships.
Since then, attacks on the Black Sea from both sides have increased and the Russian army has repeatedly attacked Odessa, an important port city in southern Ukraine, as well as the river ports of Izmaïl and Reni.
Kiev denounced the attacks as a means of hindering grain exports.
The disruptions in grain and other agricultural exports caused by the war raised fears of a situation of insecurity on a global level.
Before the war, Ukraine and Russia together supplied 28% of the world’s wheat, 29% of barley, 15% of corn and 75% of sunflower oil, according to the British magazine The Economist.
In July 2022, the United Nations signed agreements with Russia and Ukraine, which also involved Turkey, to allow the sale of grains in Ukrainian ports.
A year later, Moscow refused to renew the agreements, claiming that Western sanctions would not allow one of the conditions to be met, namely the export of Russian products, including fertilizers.
According to the UN, the agreement enabled “more than 32 million tons of food products to be exported from three Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea to 45 countries on three continents”.
Source: DN
