- Three grain ships leave Ukrainian Black Sea ports
- Turkey says the world cannot end the war by ignoring Russia
- Ukraine imposes curfew in key city of Mykolaiv
ISTANBUL/KIEV, Aug 5 (Reuters) – Three grain ships left Ukrainian ports on Friday, while the first inbound cargo ship since Russia’s invasion was due to load in Ukraine later in the day , as Kyiv called for the safe passage agreement to be extended to other cargo such as metals.
The July 22 deal marked a rare diplomatic breakthrough as war rages in eastern Ukraine, with Kyiv trying to rebuild its shattered economy after more than five months of conflict.
“We hope that the security guarantees of our UN partners and Turkey will continue to work, and food exports from our ports will become stable and predictable for all market participants,” said the Minister of Infrastructure d ‘Ukraine, Oleksandr Kubrakov, on Facebook after the ships left. .
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The first grain ship left Odesa on Monday.
“This agreement is about logistics, about the movement of ships through the Black Sea,” Ukrainian Deputy Economy Minister Taras Kachka told the Financial Times. “What is the difference between grain and iron ore?”
The Kremlin said a solution can only be found if it is linked to the lifting of restrictions on Russian metal producers.
The UN and Turkey negotiated the safe passage deal between Moscow and Kyiv after UN warnings of famine outbreaks due to the halt in grain shipments from Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, sparking Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II and fueling a global energy and food crisis.
On Friday, two grain ships left Chornomorsk and one from Odesa, with a total of about 58,000 tons of corn, the Turkish defense ministry said.
The Odesa regional administration said the Liberian-flagged Turkish bulk carrier Osprey S was arriving in Chornomorsk on Friday to load grain.
Ukraine would like to include ports in the southern Mykolaiv region, east of Odesa, in the safe passage agreement, even though it has been bombed frequently during the invasion.
The city of Mykolaiv itself will impose an unusually long curfew from late Friday until early Monday as authorities try to catch people collaborating with Russia, the region’s governor said.
Mykolaiv is close to Russian-held areas of the strategically important Kherson region, where Ukraine plans to launch a counter-offensive.
Russia and Ukraine traditionally produce about a third of the world’s wheat, and Russia is Europe’s main energy supplier. But Russia said on Friday it may not reach the planned harvest of 130 million tonnes of grain due to weather factors and a lack of spare parts for foreign-made equipment.
Ukraine’s grain exports fell 48.6 percent year-on-year to 1.23 million tons so far this season, its agriculture ministry said.
BUFFER ZONE
After five months of fighting, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy this week described the pressure on his armed forces in the eastern Donbas region as “hell”.
Moscow seeks to control the largely Russian-speaking Donbas, made up of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, where pro-Moscow separatists seized territory after the Kremlin annexed Crimea in the south in 2014.
Zelenskiy spoke of fierce fighting around the town of Avdiivka and the fortified village of Pisky, where Ukraine has acknowledged the “partial success” of its Russian enemy in recent days.
Russian news agency TASS quoted separatist forces as saying that Russian and pro-Russian forces had taken full control of Pisky. They also said fighting was taking place in the town of Bakhmut, north of Donetsk. Read more
Ukraine has spent the past eight years fortifying defensive positions in Pisky, seeing it as a buffer zone against Russian-backed forces holding the city of Donetsk about 10 km to the southeast.
Ukrainian General Oleksiy Hromov said his forces had retaken two villages around the eastern city of Sloviansk but had been pushed into the town of Avdiivka after being forced to abandon a coal mine seen as a important defensive position.
The Russian defense ministry confirmed its offensive.
Reuters could not immediately verify either side’s claims about developments on the battlefield.
War has displaced millions, killed thousands of civilians and left cities, towns and villages in ruins. Ukraine and its Western allies have accused Russian forces of targeting civilians and war crimes, accusations Russia rejects.
Fahrettin Altun, a senior aide to Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, said the safe passage deal demonstrates the success of Turkey’s efforts and direct diplomacy between Putin and Erdogan.
“The international community cannot end the war in Ukraine by ignoring Russia. Diplomacy and peace must prevail,” he said, as Erdogan headed to Russia to meet Putin. Read more
Putin said he launched what he calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine to ensure Russian security and protect Russian-speakers in Ukraine. Kyiv accuses Moscow of waging an imperial-style war to win back a pro-Western neighbor that wrested Russian rule when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991.
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Reuters bureau reports; Written by Michael Perry and Nick Macfie; Editing by Stephen Coates, Robert Birsel and Mark Heinrich
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