The sailing was made possible after Turkey and the United Nations brokered a grain and fertiliser export agreement between Russia and Ukraine last month – a rare diplomatic breakthrough in a conflict that has become a drawn-out war of attrition.

The Sierra Leone-flagged ship Razoni will head to the port of Tripoli, Lebanon, after transiting Turkey’s Bosphorus Strait linking the Black Sea, which is dominated by Russia’s navy, to the Mediterranean. It is carrying 26,527 tonnes of corn.

But there are still hurdles to overcome before millions of tonnes of Ukrainian grain depart from its Black Sea ports, including clearing sea mines and creating a framework for vessels to safely enter the conflict zone and pick up cargoes.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 has disrupted global food and energy supplies and the United Nations has warned of the risk of multiple famines this year.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in an evening video address, described the shipment as “the first positive signal that there is a chance to stop the development of a world food crisis.”

Ukraine, known as Europe’s breadbasket, hopes to export 20 million tonnes of grain in silos and 40 million tonnes from the harvest now under way, initially from Odesa and nearby Pivdennyi and Chornomorsk, to help clear the silos for the new crop.

Moscow has denied responsibility for the food crisis, saying Western sanctions have slowed its exports and accusing Ukraine of laying underwater mines at entrance of its ports. The Kremlin called the Razoni’s departure “very positive” news.

Trade from Russia’s Black Sea ports recovered in mid-May after dropping in April, although it has fallen slightly in recent weeks, according to VesselsValue, a London-based maritime intelligence provider.

Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar said the vessel would anchor off Istanbul on Tuesday afternoon and be inspected by Russian, Ukrainian, United Nations and Turkish representatives.

“It will then continue as long as no problems arise,” Akar said.

Before the Razoni left, Ukrainian officials said 17 ships were docked in Black Sea ports with almost 600,000 tonnes of cargo, mostly grain. Countries expressed hope more would follow.

“This is a glimmer of hope in a worsening food crisis,” a German foreign ministry spokesperson told a government briefing.

Relief

A junior engineer on the vessel, Abdullah Jendi, said the crew were happy to be moving after their prolonged stay in Odesa and that he, a Syrian, had not seen his family in more than a year.

“It is an indescribable feeling to be returning to my home country after suffering from the siege and the dangers that we were facing due to the shelling,” he said.

He said he was scared the ship might hit a mine in the hours it would take to leave regional waters.

The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv also welcomed the shipping resumption and said the world would be watching for more. Chicago wheat and corn prices fell amid hopes that Ukraine’s cereals exports could resume on a large scale.

Key arrangements, including shipping procedures, still need to be worked out before empty vessels can come in and pick up cargoes from Ukraine using the new corridor, Neil Roberts, head of marine and aviation insurance with Lloyds Market Association, told Reuters.

“There is some way to go,” Roberts said.

Bombardments in south and east

With fighting still raging, three civilians were reported killed by Russian shelling in the eastern Donetsk region – two in Bakhmut and one in nearby Soledar – in the last 24 hours, regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said.

An industrial city and transport hub, Bakhmut has been under Russian bombardment for the past week as the Kremlin’s forces try to occupy all of Donetsk after seizing most of the neighbouring region, Luhansk, last month.

Russian strikes also hit Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-biggest city and near the border with Russia, regional governor Oleh Synegubov said. Two civilians were wounded, he said.

After failing to seize the capital Kyiv early in the war, Russia has been aiming to capture the eastern Donbas region, made up of Donetsk and Luhansk, which were partially occupied by Russia-backed separatists before the invasion. It also has aimed on capturing more of the south, where it annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

Ukraine, which has launched a counter-offensive in the south, continues to ask the West to supply more long-range artillery as it tries to turn the tide in the conflict. The country has received billions of dollars in Western military aid and weapons since the start of the war.

Ukraine’s defence minister said Kyiv had received four more U.S.-made HIMARS rocket systems from the United States. The Pentagon said it would provide Ukraine with more HIMARS ammunition as part of a lethal aid package valued at up to $550 million.

Moscow says Western arms supplies to Ukraine only drag out the conflict and the supply of longer-range weapons justifies Russia’s attempts to expand control over more Ukrainian territory for its own protection.

Russia invaded Ukraine in what it called a “special operation” to demilitarise its neighbour. Ukraine and Western nations have dismissed this as a baseless pretext for war.

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Oleksiy Vadatursky, founder and owner of agriculture company Nibulon, and his wife were killed in their home, Mykolaiv Governor Vitaliy Kim said on Telegram.

Headquartered in Mykolaiv, a strategically important city that borders the mostly Russian-occupied Kherson region, Nibulon specializes in the production and export of wheat, barley and corn, and has its own fleet and shipyard.

Mykolaiv’s Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych described the more than 12 missile strikes as “probably the most powerful on the city in five months of war, hitting homes and schools, with at least three others wounded. On Sunday evening he reported that strikes had resumed, but no information on casualties or damage was available.

In Russian-occupied Sevastopol, five Russian navy staff members were injured by an explosion after a presumed drone flew into the courtyard of Russia’s Black Sea fleet , the Crimean port city’s governor, Mikhail Razvozhayev told Russian media.

He blamed the attack on Ukraine, saying it had decided to “spoil Navy Day for us.”

Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield reports.

But Olga Kovitidi, a member of Russia’s upper house of parliament, told the Russian RIA news agency that the attack was “undoubtedly carried out not from outside, but from the territory of Sevastopol.”

“Urgent search operations are being conducted in the city to track down the organisers of this terrorist act. They will be found by the evening,” Kovitidi was quoted as saying.

The Sevastopol attack coincided with Russia’s Navy Day, which President Vladimir Putin marked by announcing that the navy would receive what he called “formidable” hypersonic Zircon cruise missiles in coming months. The missiles can travel at nine times the speed of sound, outrunning air defenses.

Putin did not mention the conflict in Ukraine during a speech after signing a new naval doctrine which cast the United States as Russia’s main rival and set out Russia’s global maritime ambitions for crucial areas such as the Arctic and in the Black Sea.

Grain tycoon a ‘great loss’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy described the death of grain tycoon Vadatursky, as “a great loss for all of Ukraine”. Zelenskiy added that the businessman — one of Ukraine’s richest with Forbes estimating his 2021 net worth at $430 million — had been building a modern grain market with a network of transhipment terminals and elevators.

“It is these people, these companies, precisely the south of Ukraine, which has guaranteed the world’s food security,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly address. “This was always so. And it will be so once again.”

He added that Ukraine’s social and industrial potential, “our people, our capabilities, are surely more powerful than any Russian missiles or shells.”

Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russian forces shelled the Sumy northern border seven times, with more than 90 individual strikes, the Sumy Governor Dmytro Zhyvjtsky said on his Telegram channel. A farm was damaged and 25 hectares (61.8 acres) of wheatfields were destroyed, he said.

Up to 50 Grad rockets hit residential areas in the southern city of Nikopol on Sunday morning, Dnipropetrovsk Governor Valentyn Reznichenko wrote on Telegram. One person was wounded.

Putin sent tens of thousands of troops over the border on Feb. 24, setting off a conflict that has killed thousands, uprooted millions and deeply strained relations between Russia and the West.

The biggest conflict in Europe since World War Two has also stoked an energy and food crisis that is shaking the global economy. Both Ukraine and Russia are leading suppliers of grain.

Harvest could be halved

Zelenskiy also said on Sunday the country may harvest only half its usual amount this year due to the invasion.

“Ukrainian harvest this year is under the threat to be twice less,” suggesting half as much as usual, Zelenskiy wrote in English on Twitter. “Our main goal — to prevent global food crisis caused by Russian invasion. Still grains find a way to be delivered alternatively,” he added.

Ukraine has struggled to get its product to buyers via its Black Sea ports because of the war.

But an agreement signed under the stewardship of the United Nations and Turkey on July 22 provides for safe passage for ships carrying grain out of three southern Ukrainian ports.

There is a high possibility that the first grain-exporting ship will leave Ukraine’s ports on Monday, a spokesperson for Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday.

Eastern danger

Zelenskiy said on Sunday that Russia has been transferring some forces from the eastern Donbas region to the southern Kherson and Zaporizhizhya regions.

“But that won’t help them there. None of the Russian strikes will go unanswered by our military and intelligence officers,” he added.

But Zelenskiy said on Saturday that hundreds of thousands of people were still exposed to fierce fighting in the Donbas region, which contains Donetsk and Luhansk provinces and which Russia seeks to control completely. Swathes of the Donbas were held before the invasion by Russian-backed separatists.

Russia said on Sunday it had invited U.N. and Red Cross experts to probe the deaths of dozens of Ukrainian prisoners held by Moscow-backed separatists.

Ukraine and Russia have traded accusations over a missile strike or explosion early on Friday that appeared to have killed the Ukrainian prisoners of war in the front-line town of Olenivka in eastern Donetsk.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Sunday condemned the attack and said it had not yet received permission to visit the site, while adding it was not its mandate to publicly investigate alleged war crimes.

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President Volodymyr Zelenskiy denounced the strikes on Odesa as blatant “barbarism” that showed Moscow could not be trusted to implement Friday’s deal, mediated by Turkey and the United Nations.

However, a government minister said preparations to resume grain shipments were ongoing. Public broadcaster Suspilne quoted the Ukrainian military as saying the missiles had not significantly damaged the port.

Russia said on Sunday its forces had hit a Ukrainian military boat in Odesa with missiles.

The deal signed by Moscow and Kyiv was hailed as a diplomatic breakthrough that would help curb soaring global food prices, but as the war entered its sixth month on Sunday there was no sign of a let-up in the fighting.

While the main theatre of combat has been the eastern region of Donbas, Zelenskiy said in video posted late on Saturday that Ukrainian forces were moving “step by step” into the occupied eastern Black Sea region of Kherson.

Ukraine’s military on Sunday reported Russian shelling in numerous locations in the north, south and east, and again referred to Russian operations paving the way for an assault on Bakhmut in the Donbas.

The country’s air force command said that it had shot down three Kalibr cruise missiles launched on Sunday morning by the Russian forces from the Black Sea and aimed at the western Khmelnytskiy region.

The strikes on Odesa drew condemnation from the United Nations, the European Union, the United States, Britain, Germany and Italy. On Friday, United Nations officials had said they hoped the agreement would be operational in a few weeks. Read full story

Video released by the Ukrainian military showed firefighters battling a blaze on an unidentified boat moored alongside a tug boat. Reuters was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the video or the date it was filmed.

Turkey’s defence minister said on Saturday Russian officials told Ankara that Moscow had “nothing to do” with the strikes.

On Sunday, though, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Russian forces had hit a Ukrainian military boat in of Odesa with high-precision missiles. Russia’s defence ministry has not commented.

According to the Ukrainian military, two Russian Kalibr missiles hit the area of a pumping station at the port and two others were shot down by air defence forces.

Ukrainian air force spokesperson Yuriy Ignat said the missiles were fired from warships in the Black Sea near Crimea.

Suspilne quoted Ukraine’s southern military command as saying the port’s grain storage area was not hit.

“Unfortunately there are wounded. The port’s infrastructure was damaged,” said Odesa region governor Maksym Marchenko.

But Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said on Facebook that “we continue technical preparations for the launch of exports of agricultural products from our ports.”

The deal would restore grain shipments from the three reopened ports to pre-war levels of five million tonnes a month, U.N. officials said.

Safe passage

The strikes appeared to violate Friday’s deal, which would allow safe passage in and out of Ukrainian ports.

Zelenskiy vowed to do everything possible to acquire air defence systems able to shoot down missiles like those that hit Odesa.

A blockade of Ukrainian ports by Russia’s Black Sea fleet since Moscow’s Feb. 24 invasion has trapped tens of millions of tonnes of grain and stranded many ships.

This has worsened global supply chain bottlenecks. Along with Western sanctions on Russia, it has stoked food and energy price inflation. Russia and Ukraine are major global wheat suppliers, and a global food crisis has pushed some 47 million people into “acute hunger,” according to the World Food Programme.

Moscow denies responsibility for the food crisis, blaming Western sanctions for slowing its food and fertiliser exports and Ukraine for mining the approaches to its ports.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that the attack on Odesa “casts serious doubt on the credibility of Russia’s commitment to yesterday’s deal.”

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the strikes and said full implementation of the deal was imperative.

Turkish Defence Minister Hulusai Akar said in a statement: “The Russians told us that they had absolutely nothing to do with this attack … The fact that such an incident took place right after the agreement we made yesterday really worried us.”

Ukraine has mined waters near its ports as part of its war defences, but under the deal pilots will guide ships along safe channels.

A joint co-ordination centre staffed by members of the four parties to the agreement are to monitor ships passing the Black Sea to Turkey’s Bosporus Strait and off to world markets. All sides agreed on Friday there would be no attacks on these entities.

Putin calls the war a “special military operation” aimed at demilitarizing Ukraine and rooting out dangerous nationalists. Kyiv and the West call this a baseless pretext for an aggressive land grab.

— Reporting by Natalia Zinets in Kyiv, Tom Balmforth in London and Reuters bureaux; writing by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen, Matt Spetalnick and Simon Cameron-Moore.

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Russia earlier ordered the Azov Sea closed to the movement of commercial vessels until further notice, but kept Russian ports in the Black Sea open for navigation, its officials and five grain industry sources said on Thursday.

Ukraine is a major exporter of corn (maize), much of it destined for China and the European Union. It also competes with Russia to supply wheat to major buyers such as Egypt and Turkey.

Industry estimates currently put Ukraine’s grain exports at about five million to six million tonnes a month, comprising about 4.5 million tonnes are corn, one million tonnes of wheat and a remaining share of mainly barley.

Main grain export ports include Chornomorsk, Mikolayiv, Odessa, Kherson and Yuzhny.

Egypt’s state grains buyer cancelled an international purchasing tender for wheat on Thursday amid reports that no offers of either Russian or Ukrainian wheat had been received.

Russian forces invaded Ukraine on Thursday in a massed assault by land, sea and air, the biggest attack by one state against another in Europe since the Second World War.

“The market is still struggling to get a clear picture of the actual military situation on the ground. The ports in the Azov and Black Sea so far seem not to have been damaged according to the initial shipping agency reports,” one European grain trader said.

The trader said the market was looking out for any declarations of force majeure, meaning suppliers will not fulfil contractual obligations because of extreme circumstances.

Shipping group Maersk said on Thursday it had halted all port calls in Ukraine until the end of February and has shut its main office in Odessa on the Black Sea coast because of the conflict.

Bloomberg on Thursday quoted officials from U.S. grain firm Cargill as saying a ship it chartered was hit in Ukrainian waters in the Black Sea. The empty vessel and its crew are safe and accounted for, the company said.

Russia, the world’s largest wheat exporter, mainly ships its grain from ports in the Black Sea. The Azov Sea’s ports are shallower and have less capacity.

Mariupol, reported to be under attack from Russian forces, one of the biggest Ukrainian ports in the Azov Sea, mainly handles relatively small ships of between 3,000 to 10,000 tonnes deadweight.

The Azov Sea ports export wheat, barley and corn to Mediterranean importers including Cyprus, Egypt, Italy, Lebanon and Turkey.

Another European trader, speaking on condition of anonymity, said such countries would have to seek alternative supplies if the ships were unable to depart in the near future.

Wheat prices in Chicago rose to the highest level in 9-1/2 years on Thursday as the conflict threatened to disrupt the flow of supplies from the region while European wheat futures climbed to a record peak.

Russia and Ukraine account for 29 per cent of global wheat exports, 19 per cent of world maize (corn) exports, and 80 per cent of world sunflower oil exports. Read full story

Russia produced 76 million tonnes of wheat last year and is expected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to export 35 million tonnes in the July-June season, 17 per cent of the global total.

Russia supplies wheat to all the major global buyers. Turkey and Egypt are the largest importers.

Ukraine asked Turkey on Thursday to close the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits to Russian ships, the Ukrainian ambassador to Ankara said.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said he backed Ukraine’s territorial integrity but there was no immediate response to Kyiv’s request.

Under the 1936 Montreux Convention, Ankara has control over the straits and can limit the passage of warships in wartime or if threatened.

— Reporting for Reuters by Polina Devitt, Gleb Stolyarov, Natalia Zinets, Michael Hogan and Gavin Maguire; writing by Nigel Hunt.

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In eastern Ukraine, a Dutch recovery team called off its work at the site where Malaysian airliner MH 17 was shot down over rebel held territory last month, saying the frontline location had become too dangerous.

Ukraine said the halt to the recovery meant it would stop observing a ceasefire at the site, where it is battling rebels that the West says are armed and funded by Moscow.

Russian share prices fell after the announcement of Moscow’s one-year ban on all meat, fish, dairy, fruit and vegetables from the U.S., the 28 European Union countries, Canada, Australia and non-EU member Norway.

In a statement Thursday, Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said the government has “completely banned the importation” of beef, pork, fruit and vegetables, poultry, fish, cheese, milk and dairy goods from the EU, U.S., Australia, Canada and Norway.

“Of course, this is a serious decision with regard to the distributors of these products from the above countries,” Medvedev said, noting the measures will not affect baby food imports.

“And, naturally, they don’t apply to products being purchased by individuals in these countries in line with our customs legislation,” he added.

Russia bought US$43 billion worth of food last year. It has become by far the biggest consumer of EU fruit and vegetables, the second biggest buyer of U.S. poultry and a major global consumer of fish, meat and dairy.

According to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Russia’s total imports of meat and offal from other countries were worth C$7.02 billion in 2012, while its imports of fruit and nuts that year were valued at C$6.19 billion.

Statistics Canada pegged the value of Russia’s 2012 imports of Canadian agrifood at C$563.04 million, up from $447.69 million in 2011. Of the 2012 total, $469.17 million came from Russia’s imports of frozen Canadian pork, hams and pork offal.

Since then, however, Russia has moved to block imports of meat from animals fed the growth promotant ractopamine, which is approved for use in Canadian livestock.

Up until Thursday, just 11 Canadian facilities — one of which is now in receivership — had Russia’s approval to export pork. Only four Canadian plants were approved to ship beef.

Short-term inflation

President Vladimir Putin ordered his government to adopt the measures to retaliate against Western countries who imposed sanctions on Russia’s defence, oil and financial sectors over its support for rebels waging an insurrection in east Ukraine.

He had promised to ensure that the measures would not hurt Russian consumers, which suggested he might exclude some popular products. But in the end, the bans announced by Medvedev mentioned no exceptions.

The announcement saw Russian bond yields rise to their highest levels in years and Moscow’s already reeling share prices extend a sell-off.

Agriculture Minister Nikolai Fyodorov acknowledged that the measures would cause a short-term spike in inflation, but said he did not see a danger in the medium or long term. He said Russia would compensate with more imports of products from other suppliers such as Brazilian meat and New Zealand cheese.

The EU’s executive Commission said it reserved the right to take action to retaliate against the Russian ban.

Farmers in specific sectors in Western producing countries are likely to suffer, but much of the pain will be borne by Russians, who will face higher prices and shortages of some goods, with inflation already rising, the rouble falling and the economy hurt by capital flight.

“The first casualties would be the domestic market. However it will have some implications for the farmers in the producing countries,” Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, said.

Russians have relished imported food since the fall of the Soviet Union, when year-round supplies of fresh fruit and vegetables arrived and ubiquitous cheap American frozen chicken quarters became known as “Bush’s legs” after the then-president.

The nascent middle class in Moscow, which buys Italian cheese and U.S. beef at supermarkets, will take a hit, but so will ordinary people who buy Polish apples and Greek cucumbers in street markets. Russia bought 28 per cent of EU fruit exports and 21.5 per cent of its vegetables in 2011. It bought eight per cent of U.S. chicken meat exports last year.

Tit-for-tat

Moscow may also ban Western airlines from flying transit routes over its air space, a measure that would cost European airlines money burning extra fuel to avoid Russia on flights to Asia, but would also deprive Moscow of hundreds of millions of dollars in overflight fees.

Western countries imposed initially mild sanctions on Russia after it annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in March, but tightened them after a Malaysian airliner was shot down over pro-Russian rebel-held territory in east Ukraine on July 17.

The latest Western measures limit access by Russian state banks to global capital markets and also block imports of defence and oil industry equipment.

Washington and Brussels say the Malaysian airliner was almost certainly shot down by an advanced anti-aircraft missile system supplied to the rebels by Russia. Moscow denies this.

The disaster galvanized politicians, particularly in Europe, who had previously been reluctant to take strong action against a big trading partner.

Dutch inspectors are trying to examine the site to investigate the cause of the disaster and recover any remains of the personal effects and bodies of the 298 victims of the crash. Their visit has been hampered by fighting in the area, which is near the road linking the two main rebel bastions Donetsk and Luhansk near the Russian frontier.

Kiev said it would lift a ceasefire imposed in the area as long as the Dutch had halted their work. Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said seven more Ukrainian service members had been killed in the past day of fighting.

The rebels are led almost exclusively by Russian citizens and are armed with tanks, artillery and other heavy weapons that Kiev and its Western allies say can only have come from the Russian side of the border.

They have declared independent “people’s republics” in two industrial provinces of eastern Ukraine which they call “New Russia” — a term Putin applied to all of Ukraine’s south and east, where most of the population, though identifying themselves as Ukrainians, speak Russian as a native language.

Despite their advanced weapons, the rebels have steadily lost ground since June, leaving them mainly besieged inside two provincial capitals, along with hundreds of thousands of civilians who fear a full-scale government assault.

Russia has announced military exercises near the border this week. On Wednesday, NATO said Moscow had amassed 20,000 troops near the frontier and could be planning a ground invasion under the pretext of launching a humanitarian mission.

Putin has rallied Russians with relentless nationalist campaigns in state media against Ukraine and in support of the rebel cause, and Western officials fear he might invade to prevent a humiliating rebel defeat.

— Dmitry Zhdannikov and Natalia Zinets write for Reuters from Moscow and Kiev respectively. Additional reporting by Reuters Moscow, Richard Balmforth in Kiev, Maria Tsvetkova in Donetsk, Barbara Lewis in Brussels and Isla Binnie in Rome. Includes files from AGCanada.com Network staff.

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