By Adeeb Al-Sayyed
MOSCOW, July 26 (KUNA) -- The UN-backed agreement between Russia and Ukraine was a breakthrough to address global food crisis and a testament of the international community's ability to address international crises.
The agreement, signed in Istanbul, Turkiye, few days ago, "is a positive step," said Alexander Filonik , an economist at the institute for oriential studies.
Ukraine, he explained in a statement to KUNA, needed to clear sea mines deployed around the Ukrainian ports to guarantee safety of ships transporting the country's grain.
"The grain agreement signed with Ukraine and the memorandum of understanding that Russia and the UN had signed regarding exporting of Russian gain should be withing the same framework to alleviate food crisis around the world," he said.
"The UN should remove all restrictions imposed by the West on the Russian grain exports, including freedom of navigation of Russian commercial ships and airplanes, and acquiring insurance and logistic services," he noted.
Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres signed, on July 22, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that paved way for exports of Russian grain and fertilizers to global markets in parallel to Ukrainian grain exports.
Russia and Turkiye will supervise exports of Ukrainian grain and fertilizers, including Ammonia, from the Black Sea ports of Odesa, Chernomorsk and Yuzhny.
The agreement stipulated establishment of a humanitarian corridor for safe navigation of commercial ships to Ukrainian ports, as well as setting up an Istanbul-based coordination center - encompassing Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian and UN officials - to prevent shipment of weapons and ammunition.
The launching of the center is expected to take three weeks, which means that the flow of millions of tons of grain shipments stuck at Ukrainian harbors will resume by mid-August, according to UN estimates.
The deal with 120-day term is renewable automatically without further negotiations.
Military expert General Konstantin Sivkov described the agreement with Ukraine as "very important" because it would address food security for African and Asian countries, which depended on Russian and Ukrainian exports.
Speaking to KUNA, Sivkov pointed out that Ukrainian grain exports represented some five percent of global exports while Russian grain exports were over eight percent.
The agreement, said Sivkov guaranteed that neither Russian nor Ukrainian forces attack the designated ports. However, it does not forbid Russian forces from attacking ships and military facilities in other Ukrainian ports.
Russia on Sunday said its forces had destroyed a Ukrainian military boat in the port of Odesa, in an attack using a range of cruise missiles, a move condemned by Guterres and raised concerns over the fate of the agreement.
Russia said it struck military targets and did not affect the export operations. (end) as.bs