The last ship left Ukraine on a Sunday. By Monday, July 17, 2023, the deal that had kept it moving was dead. Russia had quit the Black Sea Grain Initiative and told the U.N. shipping agency that its “guarantees for the safety of navigation” were revoked, Reuters reported.
The shift was abrupt, but the arrangement had always been fragile. The U.N. and Turkey brokered it in July 2022 to ease a global food crisis made worse by Russia’s invasion in February of that year. Ukraine and Russia are both among the world’s top grain exporters, and ports on the Black Sea had been shut.
How it worked
A Joint Coordination Centre opened in Istanbul on 27 July 2022, staffed by representatives of Ukraine, Russia, Türkiye and the United Nations. Its job was to watch the ships. Merchant vessels applied through Ukrainian port authorities, joint teams inspected them, and the centre tracked every voyage through a maritime humanitarian corridor. Three ports were covered: Odesa, Chornomorsk and Yuzhny/Pivdennyi.
The tonnage
The numbers kept climbing for a year. The U.N. Information Office in Geneva put the total at 31.9 million metric tons of grain and foodstuffs by mid-June 2023, including 625,169 tons shipped on World Food Programme charters. Reuters wrote that nearly 33 million metric tons of corn, wheat and other grains had gone out by the time the deal ended. The U.N. later gave the final tally as over 32 million metric tons, delivered to 45 countries in close to 2,000 voyages. The WFP alone moved over 725,000 metric tons of wheat to Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and Yemen.
Not everything flowed. In the same Geneva briefing, the U.N. said May’s volume was the lowest since the start and “well below shipping demand and Ukraine’s export capacity”. And one part of the package never started: no fertilizer or ammonia had been exported, because the pipeline from Russia to the port of Yuzhny, halted by the war, had not restarted.
Prices
The U.N. argued that the arrangement had cut global food prices by more than 20%. Russia countered that too little grain reached poor countries. Its foreign ministry said it would consider restoring the deal only “upon receipt of concrete results”, pointing to two main demands: resuming ammonia exports through the pipeline and reconnecting the state agricultural bank Rosselkhozbank to the SWIFT payments system. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the move would “strike a blow to people in need everywhere” and that hundreds of millions of people faced hunger.
The reaction at the U.N. Security Council was blunt. Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said “Russia is blackmailing the world”. Russia’s deputy ambassador, Dmitry Polyanskiy, replied that there had been no progress on Russian exports and accused Ukraine of using the corridor for attacks, without providing evidence. U.S. wheat and corn futures slumped after hitting two-week highs, as analysts said markets had priced in the risk of expiry. Insurers began reviewing whether to freeze cover for ships willing to sail to Ukraine.
Sources
- Black Sea grain deal expires after Russia quits – Reuters
- Black Sea Grain Initiative | Background – United Nations
- Nearly 32M metric tons of grain, food exported under Black Sea grain deal – Daily Sabah (Anadolu)
