17 ships went through “grain corridor” after Russia’s demarche
TUESDAY, 1 NOVEMBER 2022, 17:22
Over the two days that passed since Russia announced the suspension of its participation in the Black Sea Initiative, 17 ships went through the "grain corridor" in both directions; most of them exited Ukrainian ports.
This was reported by the Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine, as European Pravda cites.
The Ministry has explained that another three ships with 85,000 tonnes of agricultural products left the ports of Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi on Tuesday, 1 November; two of them were heading towards Libya and Morocco. Two tankers have arrived to get loaded; they are going to take vegetable oil to Jordan and Romania.
"Due to the UN and Turkey increasing the number of inspection groups to 10, the Joint Coordination Centre (JCC) checked 46 ships with 1,7 million tonnes of Ukrainian agricultural products since 31 October; they had already departed to their destination ports. The queue of ships in the Bosphorus that are waiting for inspection has been reduced to 147 ships for both the entrance and the exit," the Ministry of Infrastructure stated.
The Ministry has added that, over the three months of agreements on the "grain corridor", 422 ships exported almost 10 million tonnes of agricultural products from Ukrainian ports; this number could have been higher by a third if not for Russia slowing down the inspection process in the Bosphorus.
Background: Russia announced the suspension of its participation in the Black Sea Initiative after the attack on vessels of the Black Sea Fleet in occupied Sevastopol (Crimea).
After this, the UN stated that all agreements remained in force, and inspectors of the organisation would carry on checking the ships.
As the European Pravda wrote in its article, the "grain agreement" could work even without Russia’s participation, if that would be a will of Erdogan, President of Turkey. The implementation of this scenario has already begun; Putin started to imply that Russia is ready to go back to the agreement the very next day.
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