LAST UPDATE | 2 Aug 2022
THE FIRST SHIPMENT of Ukrainian grain to leave Odessa since Russia’s invasion reached Turkish waters today under a landmark deal to lift Moscow’s naval blockade in the Black Sea.
The Sierra Leone-flagged Razoni arrived at the edge of the Bosphorus Strait shortly after Kyiv announced the start of mandatory evacuations from the war-scarred Donetsk region now bearing the brunt of Russia’s five-month assault.
It is due to be inspected Wednesday near Istanbul by a team that includes Russian and Ukrainian officials before delivering its cargo of 26,000 tonnes of maize to Tripoli, Lebanon.
The delivery, which set off from the Black Sea port of Odessa on Monday, is the first under a UN-backed deal brokered with the help of Turkey last month.
It was thought the ship would arrive in Istanbul early tomorrow, after it ran into bad weather in the Black Sea earlier today.
Rear Admiral Ozcan Altunbulak, a coordinator at the joint centre established to oversee the grain shipments, said “preparations and planning” are continuing for other ships expected to leave Ukraine’s ports, but he did not provide details.
The UN secretary-general’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric said he hoped for “more outbound movement” on Wednesday.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he wished for “regularity”.
“When one ship leaves a port, others should be waiting for their turn, being loaded or reaching a port,” he said.
The halt of deliveries from Ukraine – one of the world’s biggest grain exporters – has contributed to soaring food prices, hitting the world’s poorest nations especially hard.
Kyiv says at least 16 more grain ships are waiting to depart.
But it also accuses Russia of stealing Ukrainian grain in territories seized by Kremlin forces and then shipping it to allied countries in Africa and the Middle East, such as Syria.
Russia attacked the Odessa port from which the Razoni set off on Monday less than 24 hours after the grain deal was signed in Istanbul last month, putting the safety of future deliveries in doubt.
Donetsk evacuations
Russia has continued to pound cities and towns across Ukraine’s sprawling front line.
Kyiv said it had started mandatory evacuations from the eastern region of Donetsk bearing the brunt of the Russian offensive, after Zelenskyy urged the estimated 200,000 remaining residents to leave.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said a train carrying “women, children, elderly people, many people with reduced mobility” arrived in the central city of Kropyvnytskyi on Tuesday morning.
More than 130 people were evacuated from the Donetsk region, governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said.
Officials have said they want to get residents out of the battered region before the start of winter as gas pipes for heating have been severed.
In the south of the country, the head of Ukraine’s Kryviy Rig military administration said Russian shelling had killed two civilians in a minibus trying to leave the Moscow-controlled Kherson region.
Ukrainian forces have in recent days been pressing a counter-offensive to drive out the Russians from the region.
Dmytro Butriy, the head of the Ukrainian authorities in Kherson, said Tuesday they had so far taken 53 settlements back under their control.
The mayor of the nearby city of Mykolaiv said Russian strikes had damaged a university dormitory. He said 403 people had been killed in his region since the invasion, but hoped that the counter-offensive would “result in a decrease of shelling”.
More Western arms
Ukraine was bolstered by more supplies of Western arms – particularly long-range artillery – ahead of the planned push to retake Kherson city.
The United States said it was sending an additional $550 million (€537 million) worth of military aid to Kyiv.
US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said in a tweet late last night that the package included 75,000 rounds of artillery ammunition and more ammunition for the American-built Himars multiple rocket launchers, which have given Ukrainian forces an advantage on the battlefield.
“Our artillerymen are ready to turn night into day to expel the Russian invaders,” Ukraine’s Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said.
© AFP 2022, with reporting from the Press Association
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