A cargo ship full of grain has left the southern port of Odessa to test the humanitarian corridor Ukraine announced last week. Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said that Hong Kong-flagged Joseph Schulte left yesterday from one of the three ports participating in the grain export agreement with which Vladimir Putin’s Russia withdrew last month. The ship, which has been stranded since February 2022, when the war began, is moving along a temporary corridor that Ukraine has asked the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to approve.
As the risks for operators are high, Kiev assured that it will “provide a guarantee of compensation for damages”, if any. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed the development. “Ukraine has taken an important step towards restoring freedom of navigation in the Black Sea,” he said on social media at a river port near the Romanian border. The Air Force said it shot down 13 Russian drones over Odessa and the nearby Mykolaiv region.
On July 17, Moscow decided to end Ukraine’s participation in an agreement that allowed the Federation to export grain by sea despite the maritime blockade, ending the agreement that helped stabilize food prices around the world. The agreement was mediated by the United Nations and Turkey in July 2022 to help alleviate the global food crisis following the invasion that began on February 24 last year. After the Vladimir Putin-led country withdrew from the deal, it began hitting Ukrainian ports and grain infrastructure in the Black Sea and Danube, and global grain prices soared. Ukrainian officials say Moscow hit 26 port facilities, five civilian ships and 180,000 tons of grain in the first nine days of breaking the deal.
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Source: Today IT
Karen Clayton is a seasoned journalist and author at The Nation Update, with a focus on world news and current events. She has a background in international relations, which gives her a deep understanding of the political, economic and social factors that shape the global landscape. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflicts, political upheavals, and economic trends, as well as humanitarian crisis and human rights issues.
