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– Ukraine is ready to start shipping grain from two Black Sea ports under a U.N.-brokered agreement but no date has been set for the first shipment, Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said on Friday.
He told reporters in the southern port of Odesa that 17 vessels trapped by a five-month Russian blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports were already loaded with grain, and another was now being loaded.
He hoped the first vessels would start leaving port by the end of this week.
Russia and Ukraine are major global wheat suppliers, and the agreement they signed in Istanbul last week is intended to ease an international food crisis worsened by Russia’s invasion of its neighbor on Feb. 24.
“After the signing of the grain initiative in Istanbul, the Ukrainian side has made all the necessary preparations for … the navigation of the Black Sea, to start exporting our grain products from our ports,” Kubrakov said.
