A bulk carrier has left Ukraine’s Odesa port, deputy prime minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said on Friday – the fifth to sail since Russia withdrew from a safe-passage deal for grain ships.
Kubrakov said the Puma carrier, which entered the port on Feb. 19, 2022 and had been unable to depart since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine days later, left Odesa with 14,000 tons of rapeseed and 16,000 tons of metal.
Lawmaker Oleksiy Honcharenko posted photographs of the vessel on its way, saying it had entered the Black Sea, though Reuters could not immediately verify the date or location.
The Puma is the fifth vessel to leave the port of Odesa since Moscow withdrew from the UN brokered Black Sea grain export deal in July and threatened to treat all vessels as potential military targets.
In response, Ukraine announced a “humanitarian corridor” hugging the western Black Sea coast near Romania and Bulgaria.
Four vessels stuck in Ukrainian ports during the invasion have thus far been able to use the corridor to leave.
Russia earlier said it was sticking to its conditions for a return to the Black Sea grain deal which it quit in July.
In particular, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia needed its state agricultural bank – and not a subsidiary of the bank, as proposed by the United Nations – to be reconnected to the international SWIFT bank payments system.
“All our conditions are perfectly well known. They do not need interpretation, they are absolutely concrete and all this is absolutely achievable,” Peskov said.
“Therefore Russia maintains its responsible, clear and consistent position, which has been repeatedly voiced by the president.”
The Black Sea deal was brokered by Turkey and the United Nations in July 2022 to enable Ukraine to export grain by sea despite the war and help ease a global food crisis.
It was accompanied by an agreement to facilitate Russia’s own exports of food and fertiliser, which Moscow says has not been fulfilled. Since quitting the grain deal, Russia has repeatedly bombed Ukrainian ports and grain stores, prompting Kyiv and the West to accuse it of using food as a weapon.
Moscow’s uncompromising restatement of its position came five days after President Vladimir Putin met his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan and discussed the grain issue.
Russia appears to have drawn encouragement from Erdogan’s statement at that meeting that Ukraine should “soften its approaches” in talks over reviving the deal, and export more grain to Africa rather than Europe. Ukraine said it would not alter its stand and would not be hostage to “Russian blackmail”. -Reuters
