The possibility of the first grain exporting ship leaving Ukrainian ports on Monday is high, a spokesman for President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday.
In an interview with broadcaster Kanal 7, Ibrahim Kalin said that the joint coordination center in Istanbul will probably complete the final work on the export routes very soon.
An agreement signed under the auspices of the UN and Turkey on July 22 aims to allow the safe passage of ships carrying grain from three ports in southern Ukraine.
Russia and Ukraine are the world’s main suppliers of wheat, and the UN-brokered deal they signed in Istanbul last week is aimed at easing the food crisis and reducing global prices for the cereal, which have risen since the Russian invasion.
LOOK | Ukraine to resume grain exports despite risks:
Ukraine will resume grain exports despite Moscow’s attack on Odesa port
Ukraine is set to restart grain exports from its Black Sea ports this week following a UN-brokered deal with Russia last Friday. This is despite two Russian missiles hitting the port of Odesa less than 24 hours after the agreement to allow safe passage of grain shipments was finalized.
Ukraine’s president said Sunday that the country’s harvest could be half its usual amount this year because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Ukraine’s harvest this year is under threat of twice as little,” suggested half of usual, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote in English on Twitter.
“Our main goal: to prevent the world food crisis caused by the Russian invasion. The grains still find a way to deliver themselves alternatively,” he added.
Ukraine, a key global supplier of grains, has struggled to get its product to buyers because of Russia’s naval blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, which has sent global prices of grains, cooking oils, fuel and fertilizers
Explosion of a drone
Elsewhere, a senior official in Russian-annexed Crimea accused Ukraine of carrying out a drone attack ahead of planned celebrations to mark Russia’s Navy Day, injuring six people and forcing the cancellation of the festivities.
“An unidentified object flew into the yard of the fleet headquarters,” wrote Mikhail Razvozhayev, governor of Sevastopol, home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, on the Telegram messaging app. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The drone-borne explosive device was reported to have detonated at the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet on the peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. The press service of the Black Sea Fleet said the drone looked homemade.
In this June 29 photo, a local resident collects photos of his family left under the rubble after Russian bombings in Mykolaiv, Ukraine. (George Ivanchenko/The Associated Press)
Fighting continued elsewhere in Ukraine. The mayor of the port city of Mykolaiv, Vitaliy Kim, said one person was killed in a Russian shelling that damaged a hotel and school buildings.
A bombing kills the owner of the main Ukrainian agricultural company
The founder and owner of one of the major Ukrainian agricultural companies Nibulon, Oleksiy Vadatursky, and his wife were killed in a Russian attack in the Mykolaiv region, Kim said on Sunday.
The governor told Telegram that the couple was killed in their home when the city was shelled overnight and Sunday morning.
Mykolaiv-based Nibulon specializes in the production and export of wheat, barley and corn, and has its own fleet and shipyard.
In the Sumy region of northern Ukraine, near the Russian border, a shelling killed one person, the regional administration said.
Three people were killed in attacks in the past day in the Donetsk region, which is partly under the control of Russian separatist forces, Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said.