Three foreign vessels passed through the "Russian blockade" under the surveillance of NATO aircraft and stopped at one of the Ukrainian grain ports in the Danube Delta.
This is reported by Forbes USA.
The Greek and Israeli vessels passed through the Bosphorus to Ismail, and the Turkish-Georgian vessel entered from northern Turkey. The ships went with their transponders on, not hiding their course. This is the first passage of foreign ships to Ukrainian ports after Russiaʼs withdrawal from the "grain agreement".
The ships were monitored by four NATO reconnaissance aircraft: a US Navy P-8 patrol aircraft, a military Challenger surface-scanning radar, a US Air Force RQ-4 drone and a NATO E-3 early warning aircraft.
According to journalists, the planes had no weapons, but there were NATO fighters on duty in Romania at the time, including Italian Eurofighters and Romanian F-16s.
Later, the site Latifundist.com, with reference to the co-founder of the logistics company Soul Marine, writes that since the beginning of the full-scale war, all ships heading to Ukrainian ports on the Danube pass through the Bosphorus without any additional inspections, commissions, or approvals. This was the case before the appearance of the "grain corridor", during its operation, and remains so to this day. That is, there is currently no grain blockade there.
Markus Johnson, a representative of the OSINT community, is indicated as the primary source of the Forbes news. However, he mistakenly tied the origin of the ships to the ports from which they left. In fact, the AMS 1 vessel is not Israeli but flies the flag of Sierra Leone. The Sahin 2 ship is not Greek, and the Yilmaz Kaptan is Georgian (both are under the Vanuatu flag).
Andrii Klymenko, head of the Monitoring Group of the Institute of Black Sea Strategic Studies and editor-in-chief of BlackSeaNews, generally believes that the term "grain blockade" is not very appropriate for Danube ports.
"The term "grain blockade" could still be understood in relation to the ports of the Odesa region because there was a "grain corridor" there, which does not exist yet. This term is not very appropriate for the Danube ports. Like just "blockade". A blockade is when warships obstruct the passage of ships, that is, require them to stop, turn around, conduct inspections, etc. As far as I know, so far, everything has been limited to warnings over the walkie-talkie in very poor English. And messages about mining. And everyone understood that the sailors wanted to be "taken lightly," he explained on Facebook.
- On July 7, the Kremlin announced that it was withdrawing from the "grain agreement". Already on July 19, Russian troops carried out a missile and drone attack on the port infrastructure of Odesa, targeting the grain and oil terminals. The ports were under fire for almost a week.
- On July 19, the Ministry of Defense of Russia announced that starting July 20, all vessels bound for Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea will be considered "potential carriers of military cargo."
- After the completion of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, Ukraine will have to rely almost entirely on expensive routes through the European Union. Ukraine asked the EU to help cover additional costs, but the European Union currently has no free money. Meanwhile, Ukraine was forced to export agricultural products by land and river transport after Russia withdrew from the "grain agreement" and began shelling Ukrainian ports, blocking sea exports.
- Romania plans to expand one of the key transit routes for the export of Ukrainian grain after Russia withdrew from the "grain agreement", and Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia have offered five of their ports for the export of grain from Ukraine.
- Ukraine also agreed with Croatia on the use of Croatian ports on the Danube and the Adriatic Sea for the export of Ukrainian grain.