The four-party deal, also brokered by Turkey, would end a months-long Russian blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports that has cut off the export route for one of the world’s top grain producers and threatens a global food crisis. Russia and Ukraine have agreed to monitor ships heading to and from ports, including Odesa, at two control centers — one in Istanbul and a second on the Black Sea — where ships will be inspected. Russia has also given some assurances that it will not launch strikes on cargo ships carrying the 22 million tons of wheat, corn and other goods that have been stranded off Ukraine’s coast since President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of the country last week. from five months. , according to officials and diplomats briefed on the talks. But Ukraine is not fully convinced by the offer of safe passage and is also demanding a commitment to ensure Russia does not attack its ports. Ukrainian officials have suggested the outlines of a deal could be agreed in the coming days, according to EU sources who spoke to the Financial Times. But the lack of agreement on key issues means it could be up to three weeks before missions resume, according to people briefed on the talks. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose close ties to both Kyiv and Moscow have allowed him to mediate the conflict, hoped to receive security guarantees from Putin at a trilateral summit in Tehran on Tuesday, he added the people. Turkish officials expressed optimism that, after negotiators agreed on a skeleton plan in Istanbul last week, a new round of talks would be held to finalize a deal in Turkey’s biggest city later this week. The governments of Ukraine and Turkey did not respond to requests for comment on the talks. Putin thanked Erdogan for his efforts to find a solution to the grain crisis. “We proceeded with your intercession. Not all issues have been resolved, but it is good that there is already movement,” Putin said, according to Interfax. Ukraine is running out of time to ship last year’s harvest before it rots in storage and has warned that failure to export the grain will deprive farmers of the ability to finance future planting cycles. Russia has launched several missile attacks targeting port infrastructure, including grain silos, along the Black Sea, where Ukraine has laid mines to prevent a coastal attack.

Ukraine has accused Russia of attacking merchant ships and stealing and selling grain from occupied territories. Russia says it has resumed grain shipments from ports on Ukrainian territory under its control, but blames Kiev mines for halting Black Sea traffic. Kyiv still harbors some doubts about Ankara’s role, given Turkey’s apparent reluctance to intercept ships carrying grain that Ukraine says have been stolen from its farmers. This month, Turkey seized the Russian-flagged ship Zhibek Zholy at Ukraine’s request only to let it depart a few days later. Another sticking point is who will represent Russia at the Black Sea monitoring station, which is likely to be located in Odessa. While officials from Turkey, Ukraine, Russia and the U.N. will follow the ships to a control center in Istanbul, Moscow is pushing for officials from a former Soviet nation to act as its representatives at the second inspection site, two people familiar with the matter said. conversations. Russia has asked the West to lift sanctions it says have crippled its own agricultural exports as part of any potential deal. New EU sanctions being discussed against Sberbank, Russia’s biggest bank, include a crackdown on food transactions. Brussels is also set to agree measures that would exempt food and fertilizer trade from existing sanctions against Moscow in a bid to free up exports from Russia. The steps were not related to efforts to reach a deal with Moscow on the Black Sea, a senior EU official involved in drawing up the sanctions told the FT, but part of a wider move to ease the global food crisis. At the summit, Putin’s first face-to-face meeting with Erdogan in nearly a year, the leaders planned to discuss other issues, including the conflict in Syria and the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave contested by Armenia and Azerbaijan , as well as bilateral relations. Yuri Usakov, Putin’s foreign policy adviser, told the state-run RIA Novosti news network that Putin did not discuss drone procurement with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or its President Ibrahim Raisi. Iran’s leaders have called for the withdrawal of US forces from east of the Euphrates in Syria. Khamenei also told Putin that his war in Ukraine was preemptive, otherwise the West would have started it.