Bloomberg: The “Grain Agreement” will be extended — Russia remains in it

The Black Sea grain initiative will continue to operate after May 18, despite previous unsuccessful negotiations between Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the UN.

Bloomberg writes about this with reference to Turkish officials.

According to them, Russia agreed to temporarily stay in the agreement, although it threatened to withdraw from it if its conditions were not fulfilled.

The deputy of the Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine Yurii Vaskov told the journalists of the publication that it is too early to comment on the extension of the "grain agreement" and did not confirm it.

• On May 17, the last ship within the framework of the Black Sea initiative left the port in Odesa. It headed for Turkey with 30 000 tons of corn on board.
• Earlier, Reuters wrote that new negotiations on the "grain agreement" were not planned this week, and the previous ones had reached a dead end.
• On May 8, Russia once again blocked the registration and inspection of ships bound for Ukrainian ports. In this way, it made the operation of the "grain agreement" impossible. At that time, 90 ships were waiting for inspection in the territorial waters of Turkey, of which 62 are ships that are going to be loaded.
• Prior to that, technical negotiations regarding the continuation of the "grain agreement" were held in Turkey, which were unsuccessful — the parties (Ukraine, Turkey, the UN and Russia) did not reach an agreement on the issue of the admission of new ships to transport grain from Ukraine.
• On April 26, Russia once again blocked the operation of the Black Sea "grain corridor", despite the fact that on March 13, 2023, after negotiations with UN representatives, the Russian side agreed to extend the "grain agreement", but only for 60 days. Then the Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine Oleksandr Kubrakov said that such a position of Russia contradicts the agreement, because it can be extended by at least 120 days. Then Turkey, the UN and Ukraine announced that the agreement had been extended for exactly 120 days.