SHIPMENT SLOWDOWNS
Moscow denies US, Ukraine accusations of delaying grain inspections despite UN deal
LONDON — The amount of grain leaving Ukraine has dropped even as a U.N.-brokered deal works to keep food flowing to developing nations, with inspections of ships falling to half what they were four months ago and a backlog of vessels growing as Russia’s invasion nears the one-year mark.
Ukrainian and U.S. officials are blaming Russia for slowing down inspections, which Moscow has denied.
Less wheat, barley and other grain getting out of Ukraine, dubbed the “breadbasket of the world, “raises concerns about the impact to those going hungry in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia — places that rely on affordable food supplies from the Black Sea region.
The hurdles come as separate agreements brokered last summer by Turkey and the U.N. to keep supplies moving from the warring nations and reduce soaring food prices are up for renewal in mid-March. Russia is also a top global supplier of wheat, other grain, sunflower oil and fertilizer, and officials have complained about the holdup in shipping the nutrients crucial to crops.
Under the deal, food exports from three Ukrainian ports have dropped from 4 million tons in December to 3.3 million tons in January, according to the Joint Coordination Center in Istanbul. That’s where inspection teams from Russia, Ukraine, the U.N. and Turkey ensure ships carry only agricultural products.
The drop in supply equates to about a month of food consumption for Kenya and Somalia combined. It follows average inspections per day slowing to 5.7 last month and 6 in February, down from the peak of 10.6 in October. That has helped lead to backups in the number of vessels waiting in the waters off Turkey to either be checked or join the Black Sea Grain Initiative. There are 152 ships in line, the JCC said, a 50% increase from January.
In February, vessels are waiting an average of 28 days between applying to participate and being inspected, said Ruslan Sakhautdinov, head of Ukraine’s delegation to the JCC.
Factors such as poor weather, demand from shippers to join the initiative, port activity and capacity of vessels also affect inspections.
“I think it will grow to be a problem if the inspections continue to be this slow,” said William Osnato, a senior research analyst at agriculture data and analytics firm Gro Intelligence. “In a month or two, you’ll realize that’s a couple a million tons that didn’t come out because it’s just going too slowly.”
USAID Administrator Samantha Power and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield have blamed Russia for the slowdown.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said last week on Facebook that Russian inspectors have been “systematically delaying the inspection of vessels” for months.
Alexander Pchelyakov, a spokesman for the Russian diplomatic mission to U.N. institutions in Geneva, said last month that the allegations of deliberate slowdowns are “simply not true.”
Russian officials also have complained that the country’s fertilizer is not being exported under the agreement, leaving renewal of the four-month deal that expires March 18 in question.