Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said this week he plans to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin to revive the Black Sea Grain Initiative, according to a News.Az report, citing Turkey’s Anadolu Agency.
Describing the grain corridor mechanism as a “positive step” toward a “just” world, he said Turkey will monitor the follow-up of this plan. According to the report, Erdogan wants to find a way to operate the grain corridor “no matter what.”
Russia withdrew from the Black Sea grain deal on July 17 (GM July 21, p. 1), complaining that parts of the Black Sea deal related to the facilitation of export shipments of Russian foodstuffs, ammonia, and other fertilizer products had not been implemented. Moscow also had sought the loosening of banking restrictions.
The agreement, which was brokered between Russia and Ukraine by the UN and Turkey in July 2022, was aimed at resuming grain exports from Ukraine out of the Black Sea ports of Yuzhny, Odesa, and Chornomorsk to the Bosporus, without being attacked by the Russian naval blockade in the Black Sea following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
This past August, Ukraine declared that temporary corridors have been established for merchant vessels arriving at and departing from the country’s ports in the Black Sea.