UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who earlier announced he was heading to Istanbul on Thursday, will attend the event with Erdogan at the offices of Dolma Bakhce Palace at 13:30 GMT, the statement said. “The grain export agreement, critical to global food security, will be signed tomorrow in Istanbul under the auspices of President Erdogan and UN Secretary-General Mr. Guterres together with delegations from Ukraine and Russia,” his spokesman said in a tweet. Erdogan, Ibrahim Kalin. Russia and Ukraine are both major global suppliers of wheat, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has sent food prices skyrocketing. Guterres is working on a plan to allow Ukraine to export millions of tonnes of grain stocks stuck in Ukraine’s Black Sea ports because of the war – a move that could ease a global food crisis. At least 22 million tons of grain are stuck in Ukraine. Last week, the sides met in Istanbul, reaching a tentative agreement on the plan, which provides for joint inspections of ships as they depart and arrive at Black Sea ports and a mechanism to ensure the safety of shipping lanes, Turkish officials said. .
“Working around the clock
An export shipping coordination center will be established in Istanbul and will include officials from the UN, Turkey, Russia and Ukraine. Deputy UN spokesman Farhan Haq said the fact that Guterres was traveling to Istanbul meant “we are moving forward” on the deal. UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths, whom Guterres has put in charge of the Ukrainian side of the deal, and Rebecca Greenspan, head of the UN Conference on Trade and Development, in charge of the Russian side of the deal, were already there to Constantinople. “We work around the clock, with intense conversations behind the scenes with countless moving parts,” Hack said. With the growing global food crisis, Hack said that if a deal is reached “we can potentially save hundreds of thousands, potentially millions of people, from the price of food being out of their reach”. The United States welcomed the deal and said it was focused on holding Russia accountable for its implementation. “We should never have been in this position in the first place,” said US State Department spokesman Ned Price. “This was a deliberate decision on the part of the Russian Federation to weaponize food.” Ukraine’s foreign ministry said late Thursday that another round of UN-led talks on unblocking Ukrainian grain exports will take place in Turkey on Friday. “In short, a document can be signed that will bind the sides to (ensure) the safe operation of export routes in the Black Sea,” Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko told Reuters. The Kremlin spokesman declined to comment on the Turkish announcement. Dmitry Peskov said it was a question “for them [Russian] Army”. The United Nations and Turkey have been working for two months to broker what Guterres called a “package” deal – to resume Ukraine’s Black Sea grain exports and facilitate Russian grain and fertilizer shipments. Ukraine could potentially restart exports quickly, Ukrainian Deputy Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotsky said earlier Thursday. “The majority of the infrastructure of the ports of Greater Odessa – there are three of them – remains, so it is a matter of several weeks in case there are proper security guarantees,” he told Ukrainian TV. Russian and Ukrainian officials blame each other for the blocked grain shipments. Moscow has accused Ukraine of failing to remove sea mines in ports to allow safe shipping. Russia has also insisted on its right to screen incoming ships for weapons. Ukraine has sought international guarantees that the Kremlin will not use the safe corridors to attack Ukraine’s key Black Sea port of Odessa. Ukrainian authorities have also accused Russia of stealing grain from its eastern regions to sell and deliberately bombing Ukrainian fields to set them on fire.
