A second container ship sailed through a temporary Black Sea corridor set up by Ukraine’s government on Saturday after Russia scrapped a wartime deal aimed at ensuring safe grain exports from the aggressor’s ports.
The Primus, a Liberian-flagged bulk carrier, departed the port of Odessa on Saturday morning and was headed south towards the Bulgarian port of Varna, according to data from maritime traffic monitoring sites. Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksiy Honcharenko also posted a photo of the ship leaving port on his Telegram channel.
The departure of the Primus came 10 days after the launch of another container ship that docked in Odessa ahead of Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor, the Hong Kong-flagged Josef Schulte. Analysts speculated that China’s political proximity to Russia may have facilitated that ship’s passage and raised doubts whether ships registered elsewhere would follow.
The interim corridor, which Kiev has asked the International Maritime Organization to approve, was opened on 10 August as US and Ukrainian officials warned of possible Russian attacks on civilian ships in the Black Sea. Sea mines also make travel risky, and ship insurance costs are likely to be high for operators.
Russia withdrew from a UN-brokered grain deal on July 17, with Kremlin officials arguing that their demands to facilitate Russian food and fertilizer shipments were not met. The decision came hours after an early morning attack on a bridge linking the Crimean peninsula to Russia killed two people and dealt an embarrassing blow to the Kremlin.
Although Russian officials insisted there was no connection between SPAN and the decision to pull out of the deal, they described the missile and drone attack on Odessa the day after Moscow broke the secure shipping agreement as retaliation for the damaged bridge. .
The Associated Press
