The first ship with grain left the port of Odessa and is heading to Lebanon. It may enter the territorial waters of Turkey in the coming days.
“An agreement has been reached that the Sierra Leone-flagged Razoni ship loaded with corn will leave the port of Odessa at 08:30 local time <coincides with Moscow - The Insider> and head to Lebanon,” the Turkish Defense Ministry said earlier.
According to CNN Turk, the ship left the port at about 8:45 Moscow time.
An agreement on the export of grain from Ukrainian ports was signed by Moscow and Kiev on July 22 in Istanbul with the participation of the UN. Grain will be delivered from three ports - Odessa, Chernomorsk and Yuzhny. The day after the signing of the treaty, Odessa was subjected to rocket fire, as a result of which a fire started in the local port.
According to the estimates of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, since the beginning of the war, Russia has stolen and exported hundreds of thousands of tons of Ukrainian grain. Ukrainian Ambassador to Turkey Vasily Bodnar said that Turkey buys the stolen grain from Russia. Also, a significant part of the stolen grain was transported across the Mediterranean on bulk carriers flying Russian flags to Syria. From there, the grain can be smuggled to the countries of the Middle East.
Kommersant wrote that Russian producers also faced chaos in the grain market: this is due to excessive restrictions from Russia and Kazakhstan, as well as the theft of Ukrainian grain: these factors do not allow selling products on the foreign market.
On July 31, it was reported that during the night shelling of Nikolaev, the largest Ukrainian grain trader Aleksey Vadatursky and his wife Raisa were killed . In 2021, Vadatursky took 12th place in the list of the richest entrepreneurs in Ukraine.