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In response to
"For Ukrainian runners, a brutal race made sense when little else did. (this is Dano's thing - cd)"
by
crash davis
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More Ukrainian officials accuse Russia of intentionally slowing grain shipments.
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Ukraine’s Infrastructure Ministry again blamed Russia for deliberately slowing grain exports to stymie the U.N.-brokered deal that resumed Ukrainian agricultural exports by sea over the summer, adding fuel to a brewing battle over whether the deal will be extended.
Ukraine’s three open ports are operating at less than a third of their normal capacity because of Russian interference, the ministry said on Sunday in a statement on Facebook. The Kremlin has not responded to Ukraine’s allegations.
The deal, known as the Black Sea Grain Initiative, has been on shaky ground. Signed in July, it ended a five-month Russian blockade of Ukrainian ports and freed millions of tons of agricultural products for a 120-day period, which will end next month. Ukraine says it wants the deal extended, but last week Russia threatened to refuse to renew the deal if Moscow’s demands over its food and fertilizer exports are not met.
In September, Sergey V. Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, criticized the deal for not increasing Russian exports as promised, saying that the West was not removing the “logistic sanctions” to open up markets to its grain and fertilizer, according to Reuters.
Although the grain deal’s primary goal was to end Russia’s blockade on Ukrainian exports, which had been contributing to a global food crisis, it also allowed for more shipments of Russian grain and fertilizer. As part of the deal, the United States and the European Union gave assurances that banks and companies involved in trading Russian grain and fertilizer would be exempt from sanctions.
Over the past few days, Ukrainian officials have said that Russia is intentionally sabotaging the deal’s success. On Friday, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine accused Russia of slowing down grain exports to create a food crisis. In his nightly address to the nation, Mr. Zelensky said there was a backlog of 150 ships waiting to fulfill contracts to transport Ukrainian wheat, corn, sunflower oil and other products.
“This is an artificial queue,” he said. “It arose only because Russia is deliberately delaying the passage of ships.”
Ismini Palla, a spokeswoman for the U.N. entity overseeing the agreement, known as the Black Sea Grain Initiative, confirmed that 150 vessels were “waiting to move” on Friday, delays she said had “the potential to cause disruptions” in the flow of goods.
She declined to comment on what was causing the delays. She said the Joint Coordination Center — a team of officials from Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Nations that monitors the ships — “has acknowledged this problem and is trying to address the backlog.”
As of Oct. 22, more than 9.25 million tons of grain and other foodstuffs had been exported under the agreement, according to data shared by the U.N.
— Carly Olson and James C. McKinley Jr.
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