Turkish offer to escort ships through Black Sea blockade would face six-month wait for mine clearance, says Ukraine
amid a global food crisis to open shipping corridors out of Ukrainian ports has been dealt a blow as officials in Kyiv said it would take six months to clear the coast of Russian and Ukrainian mines.
However, Ukraine’s first deputy minister of agrarian policy and food, Taras Vysotskyi, said on Tuesday that even if Russia lifted its blockade, thousands of mines would remain floating around the port of Odesa, and elsewhere. It is estimated that more than 20m tonnes of grain are stuck in Ukraine’s silos around Odesa due to a blockade of the port by Russian vessels. The country has faced severe capacity constraints when trying to export its grain by road, rail and river through Ukraine’s Danube ports.
Kachka said Ukraine was already investing in extra grain storage facilities on its border with Poland, in the northern Volyn region and in the western Lviv region, and working on extending Ukrainian railway tracks into Poland, and vice versa, at several border crossings. Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, said the Russian-occupied ports of Berdiansk and Mariupol had already resumed their operations. “The de-mining of Mariupol’s port has been completed,” Shoigu said during an appearance on Russian television. “It is functioning normally and has received its first cargo ships.
Meanwhile, on a visit to Lithuania, the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said his government was ready to increase its military presence in the Baltic region in response to the war in Ukraine. “We have agreed to strengthen the eastern flank of Nato by creating a new strong brigade here,” he said.
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