Russia has said that it is open to easing the blockade on Ukraine’s ports if sanctions on Moscow are lifted, according to a Dow Jones report, citing a Russian official on May 25.
Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko said in comments to Russian state media that Moscow is willing to establish a humanitarian corridor that would provide safe passage for ships carrying food from Ukraine’s ports. But in return, Western countries would have to lift sanctions that were imposed on Russian exports and financial transactions, he said.
On May 26, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he is willing to facilitate grain and fertilizer exports, but only if sanctions on his country are lifted, according to a Bloomberg report, citing a Kremlin statement. Putin’s comments were made in a phone call with Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Draghi. The Russian president did not specify whether he was referring to Russian exports or those from Ukraine.
But an unnamed Ukrainian official cited by the Dow Jones report questioned whether Moscow could be trusted, and urged world leaders to focus on ending the war and strengthening sanctions.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price – as cited by the report – said the U.S. would not lift its sanctions in response to “empty promises” by the Russian Federation, and U.S. non-food sanctions would remain in place until “Putin stops his brutal war.”
Rudenko did not elaborate on how a humanitarian corridor might work. But the U.K.is reported to be in discussions with allies about sending warships to the Black Sea to protect freighters carrying Ukraine grain and to escort the vessels from the Ukrainian port of Odessa through the Bosporus, according to a report by the U.K’s Times newspaper.
But the operation would require clearing mines from the harbors of Ukraine’s ports.
According to a U.N. food agency official on May 6, cited by a Reuters report, nearly 25 million mt of grains are stuck in silos in Ukraine, including some 20 million mt of wheat. In five or six weeks new grain will be harvested, but there is no further storage space.
About 98% of Ukraine’s grains used to be exported through its main ports on the Black and Azov Seas, but since Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24, it has had to resort to exporting by train via neighboring countries or via its small Danube River ports.
Lithuania this week received its first rail delivery of grain from Ukraine for onward shipment. According to a U.K. Times newspaper report, LTG, Lithuania’s state-owned railway, said the delivery, which came via Poland, had arrived at the port of Klaipėda on May 23. The port expects to receive a train a day from Ukraine, each with up to 1,500 mt of grain and other produce.
Transporting the grain to Lithuania via rail is not without difficulties. The report highlighted that in order to reach Klaipėda, a Ukraine grain shipment will have to transhipped twice, first at the Polish border, from Russian gauge to standard gauge, and then back onto Russian gauge at the Lithuanian border.
U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres in recent weeks has been in “intense contacts” with Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, the U.S., and the European Union in an effort to restore Ukrainian grain exports as the global food crisis worsens (GM May 20, p. 30).
Addressing a food security meeting at the U.N. hosted by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on May 18, Guterres had appealed to Russia to allow “the safe and secure export of grain stored in Ukrainian ports.”
But while the question of withdrawal of export restrictions for Russian potash was indeed discussed with the U.N. Secretary General, it was not in exchange for Ukrainian grain, Russian Permanent Representative to the U.N. Vasiliy Nebenzya told reporters in Moscow earlier this month, as cited by Russia’s state news agency Tass.