Home » “First agreement on Odessa wheat”, but the Turkish plan does not convince Kiev

“First agreement on Odessa wheat”, but the Turkish plan does not convince Kiev

by admin
“First agreement on Odessa wheat”, but the Turkish plan does not convince Kiev

NEW YORK – The US accuses Russia of stealing wheat from Ukraine, and is asking African countries not to buy it, just as news arrives of a general agreement reached by Moscow with Turkey to reopen exports from the port of Odessa. However, Kiev does not confirm the agreement, while at the UN the secretary general Guterres yesterday met with the President of the European Council Charles Micheland its representatives for humanitarian emergencies and trade, Martin Griffiths e Rebeba Grynspanto discuss ongoing mediation to unblock the food crisis, which puts more than 50 million people in Africa and the Middle East at risk of hunger.

According to the Russian newspaper Izvetsia, the scheme of the agreement provides for the de-mining of Ukrainian ports by Turkish engineers, which would take a month. Then the more than 20 million tons of grain would be loaded onto cargo, mainly in Odessa, and escorted by the Ankara Navy. The operation would be led by a coordination center in Istanbul, under the UN umbrella. Tomorrow the Russian foreign minister Lavrov will go to Turkey to work out the details.

There are two main obstacles. First, Moscow’s more or less explicit request to obtain in exchange a relaxation of its sanctions, which is considered by authoritative diplomatic sources as “an unacceptable act of extortion, because the food emergency is a humanitarian issue separate from the measures adopted to punish the Kremlin of its aggression, and in any case agricultural products are excluded “. The second obstacle is Ukraine’s fear that Russia will exploit these corridors, and the demining of ports, to attack it: “Putin – notes the Foreign Minister Kuleba – says he will not use trade routes to attack Odessa. But it is Putin himself who was saying to the German Chancellor Scholz and the French president Macron that he would not have attacked us. “

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FAO: “In 2023 we risk famine”. A plan with Italy for food in Africa

by Anna Lombardi

05 June 2022

Michel attended the Security Council meeting yesterday on sexual violence committed by the Russians during the invasion, at least 124 complaints received so far, and then met with Guterres to discuss the food crisis. Griffiths and Grynspan have been in Moscow for the past few days, and are now in New York to work out the details of the mediation. An alternative hypothesis would be land transport through Belarus to reach the sea in Lithuania. However, Minsk asks in exchange to be able to use the same route to export its products. The room for negotiation here could be higher, because Lukashenko is not bombing Kiev. However, he is a declared accomplice of Putin and the EU has sanctions in place against Belarus that would not be easy to unpack.

In the background then, to complicate matters, there are the thefts of wheat that have taken place. The New York Times revealed that on May 16 the State Department sent letters to at least 14 African countries, urging them not to buy agricultural products offered by Moscow underpriced because they were stolen. According to Ukraine, since February the Russians have stolen at least 500,000 tons of grain from the deposits of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Lugansk, worth 100 million dollars. They were transported by trucks to the Crimea and loaded onto a dozen ships in Sevastopol, according to the SeaKrime project of the Myrotvorets site. They turned off the instruments so as not to be identified, but through the satellites the US identified at least three freighters involved, Matros Koshka, Matros Pozynich and Mikhail Nenashev.

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The problem is that hungry African countries are ready to buy, and accept Moscow’s version of blaming the West for creating the crisis, as the visit from Putin of the President of Senegal and the African Union has shown. Macky Sall. All the more reason to speed up the release of Ukrainian grain left in the hands of Kiev, and to get it to where it is needed to avoid famine.

Via Lithuania or to Romania: alternative grain routes if Ankara’s plan fails

by our correspondent Corrado Zunino

05 June 2022


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