Turkey says defense minister in talks on Ukraine grain deal

Turkey is holding talks with Russia after Moscow pulled out of the July agreement to allow Ukrainian crop shipments, a pact seen as critical to alleviate the global hunger crisis.

Russia said Saturday that it was suspending the agreement, blaming strikes on its naval fleet, and on Sunday suggested without evidence that the drone attacks were launched from the Odesa region, epicenter of the grain export program.

In a statement posted on Twitter, Turkey said Defense Minister Hulusi Akar was speaking with counterparts, reminding them that the export initiative, which has seen millions of tons of foodstuffs shipped since August, is “for the good of the entire humanity and that crises can be solved through goodwill and dialogue.”

Senior Russian officials have spent weeks criticizing the export deal ahead of a Nov. 19 renewal deadline, and Ukraine accused Russia of delaying progress through the safe-passage corridor to create a growing backlog of ships.

If the corridor remains closed, it could again send shocks through global crop markets, exacerbating hunger and adding to food inflation. Ukraine is one of the world’s biggest wheat, corn and vegetable oil providers, and the bulk of its exports go by sea. Even before Russia’s latest move, many food importing nations have been struggling to pay for purchases because of the soaring dollar and strained budgets.

“The initiative provided needed grains and oilseeds to a hungry world,” said Joseph Glauber, a former chief economist at the US Department of Agriculture who now serves as a senior fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington.

The grain corridor has had a key impact on world supplies since opening three months ago— Ukraine has shipped about 9.3 million tons of goods, and prices for corn and wheat have retreated from the highs seen earlier in the year. But exporters and officials have been warning for weeks about the ballooning backlog of ships waiting for inspection to proceed.

Millions of tons of crops are waiting at sea and ports—176 vessels with more than two million tons of cargo have accumulated in the grain corridor, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said late on Saturday. The deal, which was brokered by the United Nations and Turkey, required all vessels to be inspected before entering or leaving Ukrainian ports.

Outbound vessels that have already reached Istanbul are being inspected Sunday and Monday, but no new grain ships will sail from Ukraine for now, the defense department said. Earlier, Ukraine’s infrastructure minister said a 40,000-ton cargo of wheat purchased under the World Food Programme and bound for Ethiopia was loaded but couldn’t leave port.

Russia’s announcement that it will suspend the deal indefinitely — blaming drone strikes against its Black Sea fleet off Sevastopol, Crimea, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014 —drew widespread criticism. US President Joe Biden said it will increase starvation, describing the move as “outrageous.” Russia claimed, without any evidence, that Ukraine launched drones from off the coast of the port city of Odesa, which is more than 300 kilometers from Sevastopol —and that one of the drones may have been launched from a civilian grain ship.

—Bloomberg