WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States sees viable routes for exporting Ukrainian grain through the country’s territorial waters and land after Russia pulled out of a grain deal, a senior US official said, adding that they are aimed at Ukraine. exports at the pre-war average. next month.
“I think we see that there are viable routes through Ukraine’s territorial waters and land, and we aim… to return exports from Ukraine to pre-war average levels in the next few months,” head of the O’Brien told Reuters in an interview with the State Department’s Sanctions Coordination Office.
Ukraine is a global major grain producer and exporter and normally ships millions of metric tons of food through the deepwater Black Sea ports of Odessa and Mykolaiv, but has had to rely on its Danube river ports after Russia pulled out of the accord last month. Is kept. ,
Ukraine is considering using its newly tested wartime Black Sea export corridor for grain shipments, a senior agriculture official said on Monday, after a first successful evacuation of a ship on the route last week followed by other cargo ships.
Russia has blockaded Ukrainian ports since invading its neighbor in February 2022, and has threatened to treat all ships as potential military targets after pulling out of a UN-backed Safe Passage deal.
In response, Ukraine declared a “humanitarian corridor” on the west coast of the sea near Romania and Bulgaria. A Hong Kong-flagged container ship, stuck in the port of Odessa since the invasion, left that route last week without a shot being fired.
Western countries have accused Russia of using food as a weapon of war by bypassing the Black Sea accord that helped bring down global food prices, and Ukrainian ports and grain stores have been repeatedly raided in recent weeks. Repeated air strikes.
Russia says the deal is not working well because the poorest countries are not getting enough grain. It says its own food exports, although not directly targeted, are being hit by Western sanctions on port access, insurance and banking.
(Reporting by Daphne Saledakis; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
