Is Russia Willing To Open Black Sea Ports For Ukraine Exports?
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Roshan Amiri
- . July 22, 2022
- . Update: July 23, 2022 12:38 pm
Russia– There is good news for Ukraine as Russia has decided to sign a deal to open up ports on the Black Sea in order to let Ukraine continue with its grain exports worldwide. This has been determined by Turkey in an official statement. As the war has entered 128th day, the infrastructure for the transport of grains has been badly damaged.
Ukraine had been forced to look at alternative sources to export its huge supply of grain that has been produced in 2021. Ukraine and Russia are both known to be prominent and large producer of grain in the world supplying huge numbers across the world. In a late-night video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has hinted that his country’s Black Sea ports could soon be unblocked.
Some countries that it exports its grains include Moldova, Lebanon, Qatar, Tunisia, Libya, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt and Bangladesh. It supplies corn and wheat to say of the least. There are 12 rail crossings for goods trains between Ukraine and its five western neighbours – Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova. Literally, all of them have been destroyed.
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Most farmers are now trying to shift their logistics to another rail service. This has started with the shifting of wagons or their loads from broad gauge tracks – 1,524mm wide, in use in the former Soviet Union – to narrower European gauge – 1,432mm wide. Everything that is Soviet Union is being done away with.
They are also harvesting their grounds in signs which can be read overhead by fighter jets as neutral lands that should not be bombed. Food insecurity is now becoming real here. Ukraine is only being able to supply one third of its actual numbers due to dearth of transport facilities, grain theft by Russian forces etc.
An alternate is the Constanta Port which already works overtime to transport grain to other parts of Central Europe. Here, there is dearth of space for Ukrainian farmers. Of the 12m tonnes of grain shipped from Constanta this year, only 1.2 million tonnes were Ukrainian.
About 40% of the goods arriving in Constanta come by barge along the River Danube. The rest is brought by rail and road. But the Ukrainian river ports, at Reni and Ismail, are overloaded. They were built for local river transport, and a long queue of trucks leads back from the river, deep into Ukraine.
