First grain ship leaves occupied Ukraine port Berdyansk

The first ship with grain has left the Ukrainian port of Berdyansk — currently occupied by Russia — possibly sailing to Turkey, despite Ukraine officially closing the port at the start of May.

"After several months of inactivity, the first merchant ship has left the Berdyansk Commercial Seaport," the head of the Moscow-installed military-civilian administration in the Zaporizhya region, Evgeny Balitsky, said today on its official Telegram account.

The safety of the dry cargo ship is provided by ships and boats of the Novorossiysk naval base of the Black Sea Fleet, Balitsky said.

The ship's name, which is carrying 7,000t of grain illegally moved out from Ukraine, is Zhibek Zholy, according to the head of the monitoring group at the Institute for Strategic Black Sea Studies Andrii Klymenko. This is also confirmed by a photo published by Balitsky.

Zhibek Zholy — operating under the Russian flag — is heading to the Turkish port of Karasu, with an estimated time of arrival of 1 July, according to Marine Traffic data. But it said that it left not Berdyansk, but Russia's port Novorossiysk on 22 June.

This is not the first ship which carries grain Illegally moved out from Ukraine to Turkey. "As of today, we are monitoring eight ships delivering grain from Crimean ports occupied by Russia directly to Turkish ports," a journalist for the Ukrainian online publication Myrotvorets' SeaKrime project, Kateryna Yaresko, said.

Ukrainian authorities earlier gave Turkey a list of vessels used by Russia and third parties that are involved in the illegal transfers, including those to Turkish ports, and have appealed to them to step in and halt the transactions. Ankara promised to work it out in detail but has taken no action to date to stop ships that Kyiv claims were carrying stolen grain, citing a lack of evidence.

It is increasingly difficult to identify the origin of products delivered by Russian ships, particularly because they started disabling tracking systems.

"It is already a usual practice for Russian ships carrying grain stolen from Ukraine to switch off the transponders, while loading at temporarily occupied Ukrainian ports," a Ukrainian grain trader told Argus. "And after that, they do not even have to sail to Russian ports to create an impression that they were loaded there, because the co-ordinates confirming that they 'left' Russian ports could be entered manually."

And Russia used forged documents to export stolen Ukrainian grains to Turkey, the Ukrainian ambassador to Turkey Vasyl Bodnar said earlier this month. As the product is formally imported from Krasnodar or Novorossiysk, Turkey is technically not violating any sanctions, whereas shipments from Sevastopol or Kherson, which are currently under Russian control, would be, Bodnar said.

The wheat cargoes that are claimed to have been stolen show Russia as their origin in their inspection files, Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said last week.

Russian authorities earlier rejected accusations of moving grain out of Ukraine for international shipments. "As for the alleged cases of grain stealing, we categorically reject such baseless accusations," Russia's ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov said.

Russian-installed authorities are actively moving out Ukrainian grain from territories in southern and eastern Ukraine currently under Russian control, with volumes increasing this month owing to the resumption of railway connection between these regions and Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014.

Balitsky said earlier this month that the Zaporizhya region — currently occupied by Russia — started to ship grain by rail to Crimea for export through Russia, with main contracts concluded with Turkey.

And Russia's defence minister Sergei Shoigu on 7 June announced that Mariupol and Berdyansk are ready to ship grains.

At the same time, Ukraine's agriculture ministry last month announced that Berdyansk, Mariupol, Skadovsk and Kherson would be closed since 2 May, "until Ukraine restores control" over them.

By Victoria Blazhko