An agreement on the issue of Ukrainian grain exports via the Black Sea will be signed Friday in Istanbul in a ceremony attended by Russian and Ukrainian representatives, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's presidential administration has announced.
Earlier in the day, a United Nations source told Sputnik that "it seems that all questions" regarding the grain issue had been "resolved," and that an agreement would be penned Friday.
Also Thursday, Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for Guterres, confirmed to reporters that the secretary-general would be traveling to Turkey "as part of his efforts to ensure full global access to Ukraine's food products, and Russian food and fertilizer."
On Wednesday, President Erdogan, who helped facilitate the Russia-Ukraine negotiations on the grain issue, expressed hope that the UN plan to resolve the matter would "begin to be implemented in the coming days," and be carried out from an Istanbul-based coordination center where Turkish, Russian, Ukrainian, and UN officials would be present.
Also on Wednesday, an informed source told Sputnik that potential sea mine-free routes for the safe export of Ukrainian grain had already been delineated, and that Turkey was ready to assist in this process.
Thursday's news of decisive progress in the grain talks follows the Russian military's announcement last week that the parties had come to an agreement that the grain shipment routes would not be used to send weapons to Kiev.
After last week's talks, Turkey's Yeni Safak newspaper reported that the preliminary deal featured a provision under which Russian, Ukrainian, and Turkish representatives would monitor ports from which grain exports take place, and be allowed to keep an eye on grain-carrying cargo ships directly from onboard the vessels until their passage to Istanbul. Kiev has been tasked with dealing with the problem of sea mines floating near Ukraine's Black Sea coasts, according to the newspaper.
The UN sounded the alarm about the fate of Ukrainian and Russian food and fertilizer exports shortly after Russia kicked off its military operation to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine in February following weeks of escalation in Donbass. The US and its allies in Europe and Asia immediately blamed Russia for the crisis, accusing Moscow of deliberately blocking Ukrainian sea-based grain shipments to try to corner the market and raise global prices. The Russian side dismissed the accusations, pointing out that it was Kiev that mined the Black Sea coast, while also recalling Western sanctions against Russian agricultural exports.
Last week, Reuters reported that the European Commission would consider softening its sanctions against Russia to avoid hampering food exports, with the restrictions potentially replaced with tougher sanctions on machinery, chemicals, and the gold trade.
Governments and farmers in both the developing world and the West have expressed fears of poor harvests and food shortages in connection with the Russia-Ukraine crisis, and urged both sides to resolve their differences on the issue to restore balance to global grain and fertilizer markets.