The first grain ship to leave Ukraine since the Russian invasion five months ago sailed the waters off Istanbul on Wednesday for Lebanon, thanks to a historic agreement to try to alleviate the global food crisis caused by the war.

The inspection of the “Razoni” lasted almost an hour and a half, according to witnesses. Upon completion of the operation, the ship was authorized to sail across the Bosphorus Strait to travel to the port of Tripoli in northern Lebanon, the Turkish Defense Ministry announced.

“This marks the conclusion of a first ‘test’ operation to execute the agreement between the Russian Federation, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Nations “, said the joint coordination center after authorizing the passage of the ship.

The ship, flying the flag of Sierra Leone, arrived on the north coast of Istanbul on Tuesday, one day after sailing from the Ukrainian city of Odessa with 26,000 tons of corn.

About twenty experts and delegates from the UN, Turkey and the warring countries, in life jackets and helmets, arrived on board and began the inspection, led by Turkish Admiral Özcan Altunbulak, head of the Joint Coordination Center (JCC) who oversees these exports, and retired US Admiral Fred Kenney.

The inspection has been carried out in accordance with Russian requirementswho wants to make sure he knows what kind of cargo a ship from Ukraine is carrying.

food crisis

On Tuesday night, Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky condemned the Russian “terrorist state” for “causing a food crisis by using wheat, corn and oil as weapons”.

The Ukrainian president also said he expects “regularity” in shipments.

The suspension of exports from Ukraine, one of the world’s largest producers of wheat, has had a major impact on the rise in food prices in recent months.

The “Razoni” set sail thanks to the agreement promoted by Turkey and the UN that lifted the Russian naval blockade in the Black Sea and allowed the shipment of millions of tons of foodstuffs to be unloaded on the world market, in a time of serious global crisis. food.

kyiv accuses Russia of stealing grain from territories taken by Kremlin forces and shipping it to its allies in Africa and the Middle East, such as Syria.

more bombings

On the ground, the Russian army announced that it had destroyed a foreign weapons depot in the Lviv region of western Ukraine with “high-precision missiles”.

In June, Moscow had already claimed to have destroyed a NATO-supplied weapons depot in the west of the country, an area rarely hit by Russian bullets.

East, Kharkov, Ukraine’s second largest city, was the target of two bombings on Wednesday morningregional authorities announced.

According to preliminary information, these are S-300 missiles launched from the Russian border region of Belgorod. One fell to the ground and the other fell into a civilian facility without causing casualties, Governor Oleg Sinegubov said.

The southern city of Mikolaiv was again bombed overnight, regional governor Vitali Kim announced.

Pavlo Kyrylenko, governor of the eastern Donetsk region, where the fighting is concentrated, said four civilians have been killed in the past 24 hours.

Near Kherson, the first major city to fall into the hands of the Russian military, Ukraine announced on Tuesday that it had recaptured 53 cities as part of a counter-offensive in the south of the country.

Ukraine’s position was strengthened by the arrival of more Western supplies, especially long-range artillery.

energy warfare

Diplomatically, Western countries accuse Russia of use energy as a weapon in retaliation for the sanctions adopted against Moscow after the offensive in Ukraine.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Wednesday accused Russia of being responsible for blocking the delivery of a turbine currently in Germany, without which the Nord Stream pipeline cannot, according to Moscow, function normally.

Faced with the looming energy crisis, Scholz also said that extending the life of the three remaining nuclear power plants in Germany “might make sense”.

Source: AFP

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