At the negotiations, technical solutions for unblocking the Ukrainian ports were agreed, but will the leadership of the Russian Federation agree to this?

Yesterday, Turkish President Erdogan, after negotiations with Putin, said that he expects to sign an agreement on the export of grain from Ukraine already this week. He said that last week a technical meeting was held in Istanbul, where the main directions of the process were agreed upon. And in the near future, all agreements will be recorded in writing and will begin to be implemented.

A coordination center for the export of Ukrainian grain by sea will be established in Istanbul, in which representatives of all four parties to the negotiations will work.

The representative of Ukraine at the negotiations, People’s Deputy Rustem Umerov, said that “exports will take place from the ports of Odesa, Yuzhny and Chornomorsk, but their list is planned to be expanded in the future. All recommendations of the military must be followed. Together with the military, safe routes for commercial vessels have been developed. Observance of security rules will be monitored by a monitoring group under the auspices of the UN. No Russian ships will be in our waters, even if they sign an agreement with the UN, because Ukraine does not trust the aggressor country. Kyiv has developed a mechanism by which the monitoring group will check ships heading to Ukrainian ports so that there are no weapons on them.”

The head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, D. Kuleba, stated that Ukraine will not agree to any decision that would leave the possibility of Russian attacks on Ukrainian ports from the sea. At the same time, he believes that unblocking the ports contradicts Russia’s intentions to destroy Ukraine’s economy. Therefore, it is not clear why Putin would agree to this, unless he wants to show the countries that support his position in this war that he is saving them from starvation and rising food prices.

Therefore, most experts do not believe that it will be possible to finalize the agreement on unblocking the ports today, since Russia is not interested in the entry of Ukrainian grain to world markets, as this will increase competition with Russian grain, which is now being actively sold despite the sanctions.