Turkey to open Black Sea centre to oversee restart of Ukraine grain exports

Turkey plans to open an operational centre on Wednesday to prepare for the resumption of grain shipments from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, after a five-month Russian blockade that has fuelled fears of an international food crisis and starved Kyiv of income.

Officials from Ukraine and Russia will staff the joint co-ordination centre with representatives of Turkey and the United Nations, which brokered the deal between the warring neighbours amid an invasion that has killed thousands of Ukrainians and displaced millions since February.

Russian missiles hit port infrastructure on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast on Tuesday, following a rocket strike on Odesa harbour on Saturday just hours after the agreement was signed, but Kyiv and the UN have said they hope shipping will resume in the coming days.

Turkey said its defence minister, Hulusi Akar, will officially open the centre in Istanbul, and Russia said its delegation was travelling to the city on Tuesday under the leadership of rear admiral Eduard Luik.

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“The main task of the Russian specialists in the joint grain export co-ordination centre is to promptly resolve all necessary issues to bring the initiative to the stage of practical implementation,” the defence ministry in Moscow said.

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Turkey and the UN say its officials are maintaining close contact with Kyiv and Moscow to ensure grain shipments resume as soon as possible and deep mistrust between them does not derail the process, even as fierce fighting continues in eastern and southern Ukraine.

“All parties have reconfirmed their commitment to the initiative ... We expect that the first ship may move within a few days. The joint co-ordination centre will be liaising with the shipping industry and publishing detailed procedures for ships in the very near future,” UN spokesman Farhan Haq said.

Ukrainian deputy infrastructure minister Yuriy Vaskov said on Monday that he hoped that “over the next 24 hours we will be ready to work to resume exports from our ports. We are talking about the port of Chornomorsk, it will be the first, then there will be Odesa, then the port of Pivdeny.”

Civilian pilot ships from Ukraine will lead cargo ships in convoy out of the ports and into the open sea, where their journey will be monitored by the centre in Istanbul; searches may take place in Turkish waters to check vessels are not carrying arms or fighters.

Ukraine hopes to earn billions of euro in the coming months from the sale of some 20 million tonnes of grain that are now trapped in the country, allowing its farmers to make money and clear storage space to facilitate the next harvest and round of planting.

However, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, who is in Uganda seeking support for Moscow, warned that “there is nothing in the [grain export] commitments that Russia signed up to in Istanbul that would prohibit us from continuing our special military operation, destroying military infrastructure and other military targets”.

Ukraine said Russian missile strikes on Tuesday hit port infrastructure in Mykolaiv, 130km east of Odesa, and the coastal village of Zatoka, as well as Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine. Hours after the renewed strikes on the south, a Moscow-installed official in the southern Kherson region said the Odesa and Mykolaiv regions will soon be “liberated” by the Russian forces, just like the Kherson region further east.

“The Kherson region and the city of Kherson have been liberated forever,” Ukrainian separatist politician Kirill Stremousov was quoted as saying by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.

Meanwhile, Russia’s space chief says the country will opt out of the International Space Station after 2024 and focus on building its own orbiting outpost. Yuri Borisov, who was appointed earlier this month to lead the state-controlled space corporation Roscosmos, said Russia would fulfil its obligations at the International Space Station before it leaves the project.