President Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman said the chances of the first grain-exporting ship leaving Ukrainian ports on Monday were very high.
Speaking in an interview with Kanal 7 broadcaster, Ibrahim Kalin said the joint coordination center in Istanbul could soon complete the final work on the export routes.
An agreement signed under the administration of the United Nations and Turkey on 22 July aims to allow grain ships to pass through three southern Ukrainian ports to pass safely.
Russia and Ukraine are major global wheat suppliers, and the United Nations-brokered deal they signed in Istanbul last week to defuse the food crisis and lower global grain prices has risen. since the Russian invasion.
Ukraine is set to restart grain exports from ports in the Black Sea this week following a UN-brokered deal with Russia last Friday. This comes despite the fact that two Russian missiles hit the port in Odesa less than 24 hours after the agreement to allow the safe passage of grain shipments was completed.
Ukraine’s president on Sunday said the country’s harvest could be half of what it normally is this year due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote in English on Twitter: “Ukraine’s harvest this year is threatened to be less than twice.”
“Our main goal – to prevent a global food crisis caused by Russian aggression. Grains still find an alternative way of being distributed,” he added.
Ukraine, an important global grain supplier, has struggled to get its products into the hands of buyers due to a Russian naval blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, which has raised prices of grain, cooking oil, fuels and fertilizers globally.
Drone explosion
In another development, a senior official in Russia-annexed Crimea accused Ukraine of carrying out a drone strike ahead of Russia’s Navy Day celebrations, leaving six people dead. injured and forced to cancel festival activities.
“An unidentified object has flown into the courtyard of the fleet headquarters,” Mikhail Razvozhayev, governor of Sevastopol, home of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, wrote on the Telegram messaging app. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The drone-borne explosive device is believed to have exploded at the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet on the peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. The Black Sea Fleet’s press service said know this drone appears to be homemade.
Fighting continues elsewhere in Ukraine. The mayor of the port city of Mykolaiv, Vitaliy Kim, said one person died in Russian shelling that damaged a hotel and school buildings.
The shooting that killed the owner of the leading Ukrainian agricultural company
The founder and owner of one of Ukraine’s largest agricultural companies Nibulon, Oleksiy Vadatursky, and his wife were killed in a Russian attack on the Mykolaiv region, Kim said on Sunday.
The governor said on Telegram that the pair were killed in their home when the city was shelled Sunday night and morning.
Nibulon, headquartered in Mykolaiv, specializes in the production and export of wheat, barley and corn, and it has its own fleet and shipyard.
In the Sumy region in northern Ukraine, near the Russian border, a shelling killed one person, the regional government said.
Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said three people had died in yesterday’s attacks in the Donetsk region, which is partly controlled by Russian separatists.
