Kyiv accused Moscow of boycotting a grain export deal

The Ukrainian government accused Moscow this Wednesday of obstructing an initiative to export grains and other agricultural products across the Black Sea.

In a joint statement, Ukrainian Foreign Ministers Dmytro Kuleba and Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov condemned that the process of inspecting ships with Ukrainian products passing through the Bosphorus is deliberately delayed by Russian representatives.

“Only half of the 10 planned inspections are carried out every day,” two Ukrainian ministers said.

As a result, about 140 ships are waiting in line for inspection, the vast majority of them for more than a month, Kuleba and Kubrakov continued, stressing that “the food security of countries that depend on the export of Ukrainian agricultural products is under threat.”

The statement also emphasized that by interfering with the work of the “grain corridor”, Russia is using the situation to expand its commercial operations in the Black Sea, therefore, according to them, the volume of Russian cargo traffic exceeded the levels in 2022 2021.

At the same time, they continued, Russian merchant ships are not searched in the Bosphorus, which allows them to transport military materials destined for the war in Ukraine.

For all these reasons, the Ukrainian government has called on the United Nations and Turkey, as guarantors of the Grain Corridor initiative, to demand that Moscow stop obstructing Ukrainian operations, unblock commercial transport from Ukrainian ports, and put an end to attempts to “store food.”

On Sunday, the Kremlin refused to further extend the grain export deal, which expires in March, unless sanctions restricting trade in Russian agricultural products are lifted.

“Without tangible results in the implementation of the Russia/UN memorandum, the execution of the Istanbul package of agreements and the very extension of the Ukrainian document are inconvenient,” said Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin.