Under international pressure, Russia again proposed this Wednesday (8) the establishment of maritime corridors to transport tons of grain blocked in Ukraine. The paralysis in exports of one of the world’s largest suppliers of wheat has driven up prices and accelerated the impending food crisis.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow was willing to guarantee the safety of ships as long as Kiev committed to clearing mines placed in ports. He was speaking from Ankara, where he had a meeting with his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu. Turkey, at the request of the UN, seeks to mediate negotiations on the matter.
Lavrov even said that the guarantees were given by Russian President Vladimir Putin himself. But the proposal was promptly rejected by Kiev, which fears that the Russians will use the relief of the military presence in the ports to attack the Ukrainian territory, in particular Odessa, the port city of the Eastern European country.
Oleg Nikolenko, a spokesman for the Ukrainian foreign ministry, said Lavrov’s words were empty. “Ukraine has made its position clear: it is necessary to have military equipment to protect the coast, as well as a Navy mission to patrol exports,” he said. “Russia cannot use maritime corridors to attack southern Ukraine.”
Earlier, Sergei Bratchuk, the spokesman for the Odessa regional administration, also said that the government refuses to remove mines placed in the region. “The Russian Black Sea Fleet will fake a retreat to Crimea and, while we clear the site for access to the port of Odessa, will attack us there,” he said in a messaging app.
Turkey called the maritime corridors proposal reasonable and asked both sides of the war to agree. The country, which is a member of NATO, the western military alliance, but is also close to Moscow, even hosted a face-to-face negotiation between delegations from Kiev and Moscow a month after the start of the invasion, which exceeds 100 days.
But there is also no consensus on the caliber of the Turkish government to act as a mediator. Serhii Ivaschenko, director of the Grain Producers and Exporters Association of Ukraine, told a conference on Wednesday that Turkey was an insufficient force in the Black Sea to ensure the security of cargo, according to a Reuters report.
Before the start of the conflict, which erupted in the last week of February, Ukraine accounted for about 12% of global wheat exports and 15% of corn exports. President Volodymyr Zelensky said this Monday (7th) that the country has about 25 million tons of blocked grains. In the fall of the Northern Hemisphere (spring in the Southern Hemisphere), that number could rise to 75 million, he added.
Pressure on Russia to allow exports has grown. Italian Chancellor Luigi Di Maio reiterated on Wednesday that the blockade “means putting to death millions of children, women and men”, especially in countries in Africa and the Middle East, Ukraine’s major importers. “We expect clear and concrete signals from Russia,” he told a news conference in Rome.
The Italian government itself feels the economic impacts of the war. With very few energy resources, the country imports most of the gas it consumes, and 40% comes from Russia. In May, Italy even proposed a peace plan for the war, with the help of the United Nations, trying to increase its performance on the diplomatic front.
The matter even generated a “climate” in the UN Security Council this Monday, when the President of the European Council, the Belgian Charles Michel, went directly to the Russian ambassador Vassili Nebenzia to say that Russia was solely responsible for the imminent global food crisis. Nebenzia left the space on the spot and later said the comments were “very rude”.
Africa has also tried to act diplomatically. Senegalese President Macky Sall, who also chairs the African Union (AU), met with Putin last week. “I came to ask that [ele] be aware that our countries, even far from war, are victims of this economic crisis”, he wrote on a social network.
After the meeting, the Senegalese said Putin had told him he was willing to facilitate the export of Ukrainian cereals and also open to export Russian wheat and fertilizers to African nations.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that for Russian grain to return to the international market, the West would need to lift sanctions imposed on Moscow, but added that there were no substantive talks on the matter for now. Peskov also said any talks between Putin and Zelensky would have to be “very well prepared” beforehand.
On the war front, Ukraine has admitted that it may be forced to retreat in the city of Severodonetsk, which has been the scene of intense fighting for weeks. The regional governor, Serhii Haidai, said in an interview with a local channel, however, that the retreat would not amount to the definitive abandonment of the industrial city, located in Lugansk, in Donbass.
Moscow claims to already have control of 97% of the territory of the ethnically Russian majority province. “There is bombing everywhere, 24 hours a day, and Russia is concentrating all its forces in the region,” he said.
And a new package of military aid was sent to Kiev, this time by the Norwegian government. The Norwegian Ministry of Defense reported the dispatch of 22 M109 self-propelled howitzers, in addition to spare parts and ammunition. He also said that he has already trained Ukrainian soldiers in Germany so that they know how to use heavy weapons.
