ODESSA – The wheat that leaves Ukraine for the South of the world today is only Russian. And if it is Ukrainian, in the sense of a product in the broad plain between Lviv and Kharkhiv, it was stolen by the Russian army and sold on its own.
The United States warns African countries: “Don’t accept Russian wheat, it’s stolen from Ukraine”
by Enrico Franceschini
Nobody in the South of the world will stop to look at the origin of the seeds: that grain is used to become bread, injera, pita. In Africa and the Middle East. So far the game of wheat – hard and soft, there are also barley, sunflower seeds, soon we will start talking about the rice crisis – has been won by the aggressors, that is Vladimir Putin. Let’s see why.
The so-called Ankara Agreement
Yesterday the Turkish and Russian foreign ministers met to talk about food trade (and the upcoming Turkish elections and the appetites of Recep Erdogan in Syria). The two-way meeting did not include enlargements to the real protagonist, or rather, victim, of the wheat question: Ukraine. Much less the UN, under whose aegis such a delicate traffic should take place.
Black smoke at the top in Turkey: Ukrainian wheat remains in Odessa
by our correspondent Gabriella Colarusso
The result was to crystallize the existing situation; nothing will depart from the port of Odessa (in Ukrainian hands). From the ports of Mariupol and Berdiansk, southern cities in the hands of the Russians, the merchant cargo will be able to set sail: the Russians have had from one to two months to be able to clear the waters.
Half a ton of stolen seeds
In recent days, the US State Department spotted three ships en route to Africa and hypothesized that in their holds there could be Ukrainian wheat, which the Russians were reselling to bring food to fourteen countries at risk of crisis and with which Putin , in recent seasons, he has forged relationships. Where did the Russians get this grain from? In the terminals of the south-eastern Ukrainian ports, where the export quota of the 2012 harvest had been crammed since the end of February (33 million tons production, 22 million the part destined abroad). Ministers, mayors denounced this: “The Russians have appropriated half a million tons of product by transporting it to the ports of Crimea”. One hundred million dollars the value of the robbery. One hundred quintals would have been transported to Syria.
The United States warns African countries: “Don’t accept Russian wheat, it’s stolen from Ukraine”
by Enrico Franceschini
Together with the grain, the Russian army took away metals from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol – from a ship owned by the Genoese maritime agent. Augusto Cosulich – and everything they have found of any commercial value in the occupied territories. “You can’t make an agreement with someone who steals what you have to agree on”, noted the deputy mayor of Odessa. Oleg Brindak. For now, in fact, there is no agreement – beyond the mutual geopolitical interests of Turkey and Russia – and this “not intended” favors Putin’s interests. From Mariupol and Berdiansk Russian freighters or under the aegis of Moscow will soon sail. Other merchant ships have already left or will leave from the Crimean ports, primarily Sevastopol.
The Russian Defense Minister, Sergej Shoigu, he candidly explained that with the south-eastern conquests now there are the conditions to resume railway traffic in all respects between Russia, the Donbass, the Crimea and the territory of Ukraine “in six railway sections”. The war created new business opportunities for those who declared it.
A Ukrainian public television reporter asked Sergei Lavrov, Russian Foreign Ministry: “What do you steal besides wheat?”. Lavrov, calling for good manners, did not answer. The accusation of the Ukrainian ambassador to Turkey also rained down on the customized Ankara-Moscow agreement: “Russia is sending stolen grain to its Turkish partner.”
The bombed granaries
In Mykolaiv, the local administration recalled yesterday, the Russians bombed port structures which, on the shore, set fire to a private grain terminal in the port. It is not known whether the agricultural silo was the target of the occupants’ artillery, but the damage also affected the agricultural conservation structures. Other grain stores have been hit in Donetsk, one in Soledar of sizeable proportions. And an agricultural enterprise was damaged in Bakhmut.
Missiles return to Kiev. And Putin is now also attacking the grain lines
by our correspondent Fabio Tonacci
The last rocket on Kiev, again, would have hit, assure the administrators of the Ukrainian railways, wagons destined to transport grain. The doubt that the Russian army is called upon, among other things, to strike at the enemy economy in its basic assets is well founded.
The dangerous port of Odessa
The Turks assured that, after the Ankara agreement, the ships could leave the Odessa port within 3-5 weeks. There was no agreement, but no agreement was reached on this aspect – the demining of the Black Sea – either. For the Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Taras Vysotskyi, it will take six months just to clean up the western part. Today, they explain in Odessa, two floating mines are landing on the city’s beaches which will then be blasted. In other cases, on the beaches of Mykolaiv for example, there have been accidents due to beached bombs. The British are ready to use military technology – missiles – for demining. Among other things, throughout the first part of the war the accusations were ricocheted about who had filled the Black Sea with floating mines. The Turkish government, in its plan for the resumption of naval trade, had written that the demining of the port of Odessa and that stretch of the Black Sea would be the turn of Ukraine, in some way taking the Russian point of view on the initial responsibilities. The fact that mines in the sea protected Odessa from a Russian attack from the sea for over a hundred days suggests the latter hypothesis.
The trains for the West remain
With the (national) ports blocked, the alternative for the transport of Ukrainian wheat – more expensive, slower and capable of ensuring much lower volumes – is that of the train. From the second half of May, food leaves Kiev on the tracks towards the port of Klaipeda (in Lithuania), skipping Belarus via Poland: the grain is sent to the southern markets from the Baltic Sea. And, again, other trains leave every day from the South to go to the Ukrainian river ports of Izmail and Reni and from there, now with barges, now with trucks, conveyed to the Romanian port of Constanta, located south of the block line. naval of the Black Sea by the Russian Navy. Still, the Ukrainian government is shipping food goods to the Polish Baltic ports of Gdansk and Gdynia. And Bulgaria has said it is willing to help export grain stocks from its port in Varna, on which it is investing to improve infrastructure.
Via Lithuania or to Romania: alternative grain routes if Ankara’s plan fails
by our correspondent Corrado Zunino
This train-ship passage allows less transport than direct boarding from the port of Odessa, but the Minister of Agriculture says it will still be able to export 2 million tons per month (against 6 million tons possible with the reopening of the Black Sea. ).
Ukrainian export on its knees
The Russian naval blockade has thus far throttled 90 percent of Ukrainian exports and food market forecasts say two things. In the first few months of 2022, the export of cereals from Moscow (including the grain stolen from captured Ukrainian warehouses) has grown by 18 per cent, while the Ukrainian one has collapsed by 32 per cent. And then, the production of 2022, started in the middle of the war, could reach 19.2 million tons against 33 million last year. At best.
the Russian Defense Minister, Sergej Shoigu, candidly explained that thanks to the bridge line created with the war conquests, Russian railways will now be able to resume railway traffic “in all respects” between Russia, Donbass, Crimea and the territory of Ukraine “in six railway sections “. He thinks as if the twenty percent he won in the Southeast was never New Russia.
Russia is the first cereal producer in the world, Ukraine is placed between the third and the fifth box in terms of volumes and after the invasion it will lose other quotas. Finally, the four major exporters in the world – all North American, led by “Carnill co.” – they know that stockpiling drives up prices, their earnings and speculation on food futures.
Zelensky’s alarm
The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky today, during the “Time 100 Gala”, he said: “We cannot export our wheat, maize, vegetable oil and other products that have played a stabilizing role in the global market. This means that, unfortunately, dozens of countries could face a physical shortage of food. If Russia’s blockade of the Black Sea continues, millions of people could starve. “