After the Black Sea grain deal allowing for the export of Ukrainian and Russian grain and fertilizers was allowed to expire on Monday, Kyiv has been struggling to find ways to get its product to market. One option was apparently to appeal to Ankara for help, but the NATO ally is unlikely to take such “a highly risky move,” according to an official familiar with the matter who spoke with a US newspaper on Tuesday, according to Sputnik news agency.
The insider remark came after Dmitry Skornyakov, CEO of Ukraine’s HarvEast Holding, one of Ukraine’s largest agribiz corporations, said that “the main task for Ukraine now is to get the support of Turkey.”
Indeed, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appealed to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan alongside United Nations leadership to extend the grain deal without Russia, asking Ankara and the UN to "ensure the work of the food corridor and the inspection of ships" themselves.
Zelensky has long pressed the NATO alliance to directly intervene in the 18-month-long conflict with Russia, an action that would bring four nuclear-armed powers into an open conflict with one another.
So far, the alliance has been hesitant to create such a situation, opting instead to funnel weapons to Kyiv, effectively turning the Ukrainian Armed Forces into a NATO proxy force. A recent NATO summit in Lithuania earlier this month saw a furious Zelensky, explicitly rebuffed from joining the alliance during the present conflict, strongly criticize the Western powers.
The grain deal was initially brokered by the UN and Turkiye, the latter of which has postured as neutral during the conflict in Ukraine, despite arming Kiev with combat drones and other weapons, as well as the United Nations. While Ukrainian grain ships have never been fired on by Russian forces, Kyiv insisted it was unable to export foodstuffs due to such a risk, driving speculation on grain reserves that sent prices sky-high across Asia and Africa. The deal allowed for prices to be relaxed by soothing anxieties about supply, although it has only been partially effective in this regard.
Moscow elected to allow the deal to expire on Monday instead of renewing it because while Russia has ensured the safety of Ukrainian grain and fertilizer ships as they passed near the conflict zone, a similar effort to ensure the uninterrupted export of Russian products, particularly of fertilizers, by international partners has not been made.
On Wednesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dimitry Peskov said the UN has 90 days to normalize Russian agricultural exports in the wake of the grain deal’s collapse, including reconnecting the Russian state-owned agricultural bank Rosselkhozbank to the SWIFT bank wire service, before Moscow will cease attempting to revive the grain deal with Ukraine.
MNA/PR
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