Five days before the Black Sea grain corridor agreement is scheduled to expire, with Russia showing no willingness to extend it, the United Nations has submitted a set of proposals hoping to sway Moscow.
UN secretary general Antonio Guterres sent a letter to President Vladimir Putin with an offer to facilitate agricultural and fertiliser-related payments by the Russian Agricultural Bank.
The letter was sent on 11 July, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters on Wednesday. The Russian government has not responded yet.
He said Guterres’ proposal aims at “removing hurdles affecting financial transactions through the Russian Agricultural Bank, a major concern expressed by the Russian Federation, and simultaneously allow for the continuing flow of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea”.
This information is in line with press reports last week, according to which the West was considering bending some of its financial sanctions to allow the Russian Agricultural Bank to regain access to the global SWIFT interbank messaging system through a new, separate subsidiary.
Russian officials, however, have already dismissed such mooted proposals as “deliberately impossible”, given the time it would take for the bank to open a subsidiary.
“They [the West] are trying to create the appearance of some breakthrough results” amid a “surge of propaganda”, foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on 5 July.
As TradeWinds already reported, concessions over SWIFT alone are unlikely to sway Putin, as it is just one of several conditions set by Moscow to extend the Black Sea Grain Initiative (BSGI).
Speaking on the sidelines of a Nato summit in Vilnius, Lithuania on Wednesday, however, BSGI mediator Turkey suggested that there might be some movement in the Russian position.
“Putin … made some suggestions,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters after the summit wrapped up. “Working solutions-oriented, we are taking these suggestions into account.”
The initiative already appears to be winding down well before its formal expiration on 17 July.
Two ships currently being loaded with Ukrainian grain in Odesa are the last vessels registered to use the corridor.
The 43,800-dwt TQ Samsun (built 1996) and 43,600-dwt TK Majestic (built 1994) had been expected to leave Odesa by 11 July, but their departure was pushed back.
The TK Majestic is now expected to sail on Thursday. If it does, it will be the 1,003rd ship to have used the grain corridor, which started in August last year and helped Ukraine bring nearly 33m tonnes of its foodstuffs to world markets.
The initiative, has been used mostly by vessels between general cargo ship and panamax size. It has provided superior earnings to the primarily Greek and Turkish owners who used it. The agreement, however, has lost much of its shine in recent months amid falling freight markets.
