ISTANBUL,
Turkey —
Russia and Ukraine on Wednesday held their first direct negotiations since
March in a bid to break an impasse over grain exports that has seen food prices
soar and millions face hunger.
اضافة اعلان
The high-stakes meeting involving UN and
Turkish officials in Istanbul broke up after slightly more than three hours
without the participants speaking to the press.
But a UN spokesman said the global body’s
Secretary-General
Antonio Guterres would soon brief reporters about “positive”
movement at the talks.
“We believe that this is something positive
and (Guterres) will talk to you at some length about why that is,” UN spokesman
Farhan Haq told reporters in New York.
The stakes could not be higher for tens of
millions of people facing the threat of starvation in African and other poor
nations because of the battles engulfing one of the world’s main
grain-producing regions.
Ukraine is a vital exporter of wheat and
grains such as barley and maize. It has also supplied nearly half of all the
sunflower oil traded on global markets.
But shipments across the Black Sea have been
blocked by Russian warships and mines Kyiv has laid to avert a feared
amphibious assault.
Russian
proposals
The
Istanbul negotiations are being complicated by growing suspicions that Russia
is trying to export grain it has stolen from Ukrainian farmers in regions under
its control.
Russian authorities in Ukraine’s southern
region of Kherson on Wednesday countered with accusations that Kyiv’s forces
were deliberately burning crops and mining fields.
US space agency data released last week
showed 22 percent of Ukraine’s farmland falling under Russian control since the
February 24 invasion.
The two sides entered the talks saying that a
deal was close but some contentious issues remained.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister
Dmytro Kuleba said
Kyiv was “two steps from an agreement with Russia”.
Russian defense ministry spokesman Igor
Konashenkov said Moscow had “submitted a package of proposals for the speediest
practical solution” to the crisis.
Russia said on Tuesday its requirements
included the right to “search the ships to avoid the contraband of weapons” — a
demand rejected by Kyiv.
Grain
corridors
NATO
member
Turkey has been using its good relations with both the Kremlin and Kyiv
to try and broker an agreement on a safe way to deliver the grain.
Turkey says it has 20 merchant ships waiting
in the region that could be quickly loaded and sent to world markets.
A plan by the UN proposes the ships follow
safe “corridors” that run between the known location of mines.
Kyiv has also asked that its vessels be
accompanied by warships from a friendly country such as Turkey.
Experts say de-mining the Black Sea is a complex operation that
could take months — too long to address the growing global food crisis.
Kuleba said he did not think Moscow actually
wanted to reach an agreement because proceeds from grain sales would help
support a Western-backed government in Kyiv that the Kremlin brands as “Nazis”.
“They know that if we start to export, we
will get proceeds from world markets, and this will make us stronger,” Kuleba
said.
‘Operational
pause’
The
talks in Istanbul precede a meeting in Tehran next Tuesday between Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
Erdogan’s ultimate goal is to bring Putin and
Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelensky down to Istanbul for talks aimed at
pausing the fighting and launching formal peace talks.
The Russian army has not conducted any major
ground offensives since taking the last points of Ukrainian resistance in the
war zone’s smaller Lugansk region at the start of the month.
Analysts believe the Russians are taking an
“operational pause” during which they are rearming and regrouping forces before
launching an assault on Sloviansk and Kramatorsk — Ukraine’s administrative
center for the east.
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