Wheat: the first ship carrying wheat from Ukraine has left the port of Odessa

Today, August 1st, the first ship carrying grain since the war started from the Ukrainian port of Odessa, as established by the agreement on the reopening of the ports that Russia and Ukraine signed a few days ago. TO make the announcement of the departure was Ibrahim Kalin, a spokesman for the Turkish government, on Sunday 31 July. Turkey was, together with the United Nations, the main mediating force between Russia and Ukraine to create the conditions that convinced Russian President Vladimir Putin to declare the ports of Odessa, Chornomors and Yuzhny safe for ships carrying grain.

Ukrainian infrastructure minister Oleksandr Kubrakov posted a video of the ship leaving from the port on his social networks, commenting “prevent world hunger together with the United Nations, the European Commission and the G7“.

The ship is called Razoni, flies the flag of Sierra Leone, and is transporting about 26,000 tons of corn to Lebanon, which has long been in a food crisis after the explosion in the port of Beirut in 2020 destroyed much of the reserves. national wheat. Before arriving in Lebanon, the ship should make a stop in Istanbul Tuesday, August 2, as according to the agreement, Ukrainian ships in transit must be inspected by Turkey to allay Russian fears that they could be used to bring weapons to Ukraine. To follow the progress of the ship in real time, you can use this mapmade available by Flight Radar 24, which currently shows the Razoni ship in the Black Sea off the Ukrainian coast. In the next few days, says Obrakov, more should leave.

Before the war, Ukraine was the fourth largest exporter of wheat in the world, and the blocking of exports caused by the Russian invasion is generating a major food crisis in several countries around the world, many of them in Africa and the Middle East. It is estimated that at the moment in Ukraine they have been stopped for months about 20 million tons of wheat ready to be exported.

The agreement between Russia and Ukraine on wheat was interpreted as a first step towards resolving the stalemate, but of course there are still many obstacles. The first, extremely immediate, is the naval mines that Ukraine has positions at various points off its coast to prevent Russian warships from approaching. “I’m scared that there are naval mines” – has declared a Reuters crew member Abdullah Jendi – “We need about two to three hours to get out of regional waters. We hope that nothing happens and that we make no mistakes“.