After announcing yesterday that it was breaking the agreement with the UN for the export of Ukrainian cereals through the Black Sea, Russia today justified its decision by assuring that the marine drones that attacked its fleet in the port of Sevastopol, on the Crimean peninsula, used the ‘grain broker’. The route has been blocked, which has caused that 176 ships that had already set sail from Ukraine have not been able to reach their destination to deliver a total of two million tons of grain.
“The coordinates of the route of one of the marine drones show that its starting point was in the security zone of the ‘grain corridor’ in the Black Sea,” the statement from the Russian Defense Ministry said. It also adds that it would be shown that the devices were launched from “a merchant ship leased by kyiv and its Western protectors for the export of agricultural products from the seaports of Ukraine”, as it would have been recorded in a navigation receiver, according to the release.
All aerial and maritime drones with which, according to Russia, its fleet was attacked yesterday were destroyed by Russian defense systems. The Kremlin again points to the United Kingdom as the main architect of what it considers a “terrorist attack” directed by “British specialists” who were in the city of Ochakov, in the Mykolaiv region of Ukraine.
The Russian withdrawal from the agreement for the export of grain through the Black Sea has caused 176 ships that had sailed from Ukrainian ports to drift and an undetermined number of ships have been left waiting in the ports. According to estimates by the country’s Foreign Ministry, the ships were carrying a total of two million tons of grain, enough to feed seven million people. The Ukrainian government has specified that one of these vessels was headed for Ethiopia, “which is on the verge of famine” and that without the corridor “export is impossible.”
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba, has detailed that the bottleneck in this security route began last September when Russia deliberately began to slow down its operation to boycott the agreement that was signed last July in Istanbul (Turkey) and which expired in mid-November. “Russia decided long ago to resume its Hunger Games and now it is trying to justify it,” Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on his Twitter account.
The High Representative of the European Union (EU) for Security and Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, is in contact with the United Nations and its Secretary General, António Guterres, to “coordinate actions to guarantee the export of cereals and fertilizers from Ukraine,” according to the politician tweeted. At the same time, he stressed that Russia “must return to the agreement” and assured that the EU “will play its role to counteract the global food crisis.”
The possible consequences of blocking this corridor has led Guterres to delay a trip to Algiers. The UN Secretary General has expressed his “deep concern” about the situation and has assured that he is still in “intense contacts” to end the suspension of Russia’s participation in the corridor.
