MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th July, 2023) Kiev will ask the United Nations and its foreign allies for help setting up a new sea route for safeguarded grain exports after the collapse of the grain deal, the secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council said Wednesday.
"We are considering asking our partners and the UN to create humanitarian convoys protected by sea-based defenses," Oleksiy Danilov said during a televised Q&A session.
Reuters reported on Wednesday that Ukraine sent a letter to the UN's International Maritime Organization asking for its assistance in creating a temporary shipping route in the northwestern part of the Black Sea.
Vasyl Shkurakov, the Ukrainian minister of communities, territories and infrastructure, said the proposed route would run along the ports of Chornomorsk, Odesa and Pivdennyi, also known as Yuzhne, as well as the exclusive maritime economic zone of Romania.
A senior EU official told media on Tuesday that the European Union was still working with international mediators to convince Russia to return to the Black Sea Grain Initiative. A parallel effort is underway to get more Ukrainian grain exported by land to EU member states, the official said.
Russia and Ukraine struck the Turkey- and UN-brokered package deal in July 2022 to provide a humanitarian maritime corridor for ships carrying food and fertilizer from Ukraine's Black Sea ports. Despite having since agreed to several extensions to the now expired deal, Moscow argued that the component on the facilitation of Russian grain and fertilizer exports had not been fulfilled.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that the pact was de facto terminated, however, Russia would immediately return to its implementation as soon as the commitments toward Moscow were fulfilled.
Ukraine and its EU donors insist that Ukrainian grain is vital to feeding the world's least developed countries, but UN data show that the largest share of Ukrainian grain exports ended up in the EU, while Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia received slightly over 2% of the grain.
