Two more grain ships sail from Ukraine as third port opens
ISTANBUL/KYIV/MOSCOW — Two more ships, carrying corn and soybeans, departed from Ukrainian Black Sea ports on Monday, Turkiye and Ukraine said, taking the total to 10 since the first ship sailed last week under a deal with Russia to unblock Ukrainian grain exports.
The United Nations and Turkiye brokered the agreement last month after warnings that the halt in grain shipments caused by the Ukraine crisis could lead to severe food shortages and even outbreaks of famine in parts of the world.
The Sacura, which departed from Pivdennyi, is carrying 11,000 tons of soybeans to Italy, Turkiye’s defense ministry said on Monday, while the Arizona, which left Chornomorsk, is carrying 48,458 tons of corn to Iskenderun in southern Turkiye.
Separately, the Polarnet, which departed on Friday, reached its final destination in northwestern Turkiye’s Derince on Monday morning to be unloaded, marking the completion of the first shipment since the exports were relaunched.
So far, around 243,000 tons of corn have been exported from Ukraine on seven ships since the first departure on Aug 1, according to a Reuters tally of data from Turkiye’s defense ministry.
Ukraine’s Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov confirmed that the two latest ships left on Monday, adding that Pivdennyi, the third Ukrainian port included in the deal, was finally up and running as part of the initiative.
Over a fresh strike on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Ukraine and Russia exchanged accusations on Sunday.
Zaporizhzhia is one of the largest atomic power complexes in Europe and generates a quarter of Ukraine’s electricity. It has been under the control of Russian forces since March and has been the scene of military strikes in recent days.
Ukraine’s state-run nuclear energy operator Energoatom accused Russian forces of shelling the power plant, saying the latest rocket attacks on Saturday hit an area next to the plant’s dry storage facility, where 174 containers with spent nuclear fuel were stored in the open air.
Energoatom said it is impossible to properly monitor the radiation situation at the site because three radiation monitoring detectors around the facility were damaged.
On Sunday, the TASS news agency reported that the administration of Energodar city, which is home to the nuclear power plant, blamed the Ukrainian army for the attacks.
The city administration said Ukrainian troops launched a strike against the plant using the 220-millimeter Uragan multiple launch rocket system on Saturday night. The storage facility for spent nuclear fuel was in the affected area.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Monday for international inspectors to be given access to the Zaporizhzhia plant.
“Any attack (on) a nuclear plant is a suicidal thing,” Guterres told a news conference in Tokyo, two days after he visited Hiroshima to commemorate the Aug 6, 1945, atomic bombing.
He called on nuclear states to commit to no first use of the weapons.
The Zaporizhzhia plant is operating “in normal mode”, the Interfax news agency quoted the Russian-installed head of the local administration as saying on Monday.