日: 2022年8月7日

Freight ships carrying almost 170,000 tonnes of grain and other products set sail from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports this morning as part of a U.N.-brokered deal to protect the export of vital foodstuffs from the nation amid war with .

Foreign-flagged ships yesterday docked at a Ukrainian port for the first time since Russia’s invasion began on February 24, according to infrastructure minister Oleksandr Kubrakov.

Four bulk carriers were then loaded to the brim with corn, oil and other sorely needed products, Ukraine’s sea ports authority said on , and were able to leave the southern ports safely. 

The operation was overseen by a Joint Coordination Centre (JCC) in Istanbul where Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish and U.N.

personnel are working to kickstart grain shipments from Ukraine.

‘We are gradually moving on to larger volumes of work. We plan to ensure the ability of the ports to handle at least 100 vessels per month in the near future,’ Kubrakov said on Facebook on Sunday.

He said Ukraine soon planned to involve Pivdennyi port in implementation of the grain export initiative and expected that as a result Ukraine will be able to ship up to at least 3 million tonnes of goods per month.

Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the two nations together accounted for nearly a third of global wheat exports, but the conflict disrupted months of harvesting, processing and exporting operations and threatened to exacerbate a global food crisis.

Ukrainian authorities say Russian missile attacks have devastated wheat fields and grain storage warehouses, while Russia’s ships blockaded southern ports, preventing ships from entering or leaving.

Russia meanwhile accused Ukraine of placing mines along its southern shores and said it had hamstrung its own export operations. 

The JCC said late on Saturday it had authorised the departure of a total of five new vessels through the Black Sea corridor: four vessels outbound from Chornomorsk and Odesa carrying 161,084 metric tonnes of foodstuffs, and one inbound.

The ships that have left Ukrainian ports included the Marshall Islands-flagged Glory, with a cargo of 66,000 tonnes of corn bound for Istanbul, and Riva Wind, loaded with 44,000 tonnes of corn, heading for Turkey’s Iskenderun, the Turkish defence ministry said.

It said the other two vessels to have left Ukraine were Star Helena, with a cargo of 45,000 tonnes of meal to China, and Mustafa Necati, carrying 6,000 tonnes of sunflower oil to Italy.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed the resumption of exports, though he said risks remained.

‘The threat of Russian provocations and terrorist acts remains.

Everyone should be aware of this,’ he said.

‘But if our partners fulfil their part of the commitment and guarantee the security of supplies, this will really solve the global food crisis.’

Despite agreeing to cease its blockade on Ukraine’s ports, Russia has continued to attack dozens of southeastern Ukrainian towns, while the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) raised grave concern about the shelling of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia. 

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb.

24 in what President Vladimir Putin termed a ‘special military operation’, the conflict has settled into a war of attrition fought largely in Ukraine’s east and south.

But the fighting over the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, captured by Russian forces in the opening stage of the war but still run by Ukrainian technicians, has raised the prospect of a wider disaster.

Shells hit a high-voltage power line at the facility on Friday, forcing its operators to disconnect a reactor to prevent the possibility of radiation leaks. 

‘I’m extremely concerned by the shelling at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which underlines the very real risk of a nuclear disaster,’ IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in a statement yesterday.

Ukraine’s state nuclear power company Energoatom blamed Russia for the damage while Russia’s defence ministry accused Ukrainian forces of shelling the plant.

The United States has accused Russia of using the facility as a ‘nuclear shield’ by moving large amounts of troops, ammunition and military equipment to the area, in the knowledge that Ukraine’s armed forces are highly unlikely to launch an attack on its own power plant, particularly with the looming threat of nuclear disaster.

Grossi, who leads the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog, urged all sides to exercise the ‘utmost restraint’.

Russia is trying to gain control of the largely Russian-speaking Donbas region in the east, comprised of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, where pro-Moscow separatists seized territory after the Kremlin annexed Crimea in 2014.

Ukraine’s military said late on Saturday that Russian forces had shelled dozens of front-line towns and were trying to attack in six different areas in the Donetsk region, though had struggled to gain any ground. 

Zelensky said that over the past week his forces had ‘achieved powerful results’ in destroying Russia’s logistics supplies and rear bases.

‘Every strike on the enemy’s ammunition depots, on their command posts, and on accumulations of Russian equipment saves the lives of all of us, the lives of Ukrainian military and civilians,’ he said in a late-night video address.

British military intelligence said earlier that Russian forces were almost certainly amassing in the south, anticipating a counter-offensive or in preparation for an assault, and the war was about to enter a new phase, with most fighting shifting to a nearly 220 miles-long front from near Zaporizhzhia to Kherson, parallel to the Dnieper River.

Ukraine’s forces were focusing on hitting bridges, ammunition depots, and rail links with growing frequency in its southern regions, including the strategically important railroad spur that links Kherson to Russian-occupied Crimea, it said.