Two civilian cargo ships moored at a Ukrainian port to load grain.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Alexander Kubrakov said on Saturday that two civilian cargo ships had docked at a Ukrainian port on the Black Sea. This happened for the first time since Russia closed the grain deal.

The shipping companies that own the ships clarified that they stopped at the port of Chernomorsk to load about 20 thousand tons of wheat destined for countries in Africa and Asia, Kubrakov explained on Facebook.

According to Kiev, two ships, Resilient Africa and Aroyat, fly the flag of the state of Palau (in the Pacific Ocean), and their crew consists of citizens of Ukrainian, Turkish, Azerbaijani and Egyptian origin.

Although Kubrakov did not specify the arrival time of the cargo ships in Chernomorsk, according to the maritime traffic management website MarineTraffic, both ships were already in port in the afternoon.

Since the invasion began in February 2022, Russia has been blockading Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea, which has caused great unrest from the start due to fears of famine in some countries, since Ukraine is a major grain exporter.

In this context, the UN and Turkey mediated negotiations on an international agreement that would allow Ukrainian agricultural exports to enter world markets from three ports, including Chornomorsk. However, after the agreement expired in July, Moscow refused to renew it.

Similarly, after the deal ended, Moscow began attacking Ukrainian port infrastructure, and in response, Kyiv established a temporary corridor through the Black Sea for the transit of civilian ships at its own risk.

So far, five cargo ships have used the aforementioned corridor to exit Ukrainian ports, some of which have been blocked since the start of the war.

However, civilian cargo ships did not enter Ukrainian ports.