Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics that ranged from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders. Pincus won an Emmy in 1981 and was the recipient of the Arthur Ross Award from the American Academy for Diplomacy in 2010. He was also a team member for a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 and the George Polk Award in 1978.
OPINION — Ukraine’s Black Sea ports have been blocked since Russia invaded the country on February 24. Today, Ukraine claims more than 25 million tons of grain are stuck in silos there, causing a potential food crisis around the world. Prices are up, and shortages are expected.
Together, Russia and Ukraine account for nearly 30 percent of global wheat supplies along with other grains, sunflower seed oil and fertilizers.
The United Nations has reported, “some 95 percent of Ukrainian grain exports transited through Odessa, as well as through Mariupol and Kherson, both of which have been severely damaged.”
To measure the impact, “In 2020, 38 countries/territories affected by food crises received 34 percent of the total Ukrainian exports of wheat and maize products,” the U.N. reported.
Last Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call, “We are potentially on the verge of a very deep food crisis which is linked to the introduction of illegal sanctions against us and the actions of the Ukrainian authorities who have mined the Black Sea passages and have not been obstructed by any of Russia, despite not sending grain from there.”
Ukrainian tugboats and naval auxiliaries did mine the waters along the coast of the Gulf of Odessa to prevent an invasion from the sea as surface units of the Russian fleet appeared off the coast.
On May 19, the United Nations Security Council held a meeting on the food crisis at the suggestion of the U.S., which was at the time, serving in its rotation as president of the Council. David Beasley, Executive Director of the World Food Program, told the Council that, “failure to open the ports in the Odessa region is a declaration of war on global food security and will result in famines, destabilization and mass migration around the world.”
Last Wednesday, Pope Francis urged authorities to lift the ban on wheat exports from Ukraine, saying the grain cannot be used as a “weapon of war.” The Pope said the wheat block was “very worrying” for the millions who depend on it, especially in poor countries.
With that as background, which of the following statements by Russian President Vladimir Putin should the public believe? And remember, Russia has other ways to get its grain to overseas markets.
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Putin told French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz during their May 28 telephone call that the “the export of Ukrainian grain from the Black Sea ports…will definitely require the lifting of the relevant sanctions.”
Last Friday, Putin told an interviewer for Russian state television, channel Rossiya 24, “I have already said to all our colleagues many times – let them [the Ukrainians] de-mine the [Ukraine-controlled Black Sea] ports and let the vessels loaded with grain, leave. We will guarantee their peaceful passage to international waters without any problems. There are no problems at all. Go ahead.”
Has Putin decided to remove his navy’s blockade of Ukraine’s remaining Black Sea ports and has he dropped his earlier demand that some economic sanctions be removed?
I doubt it, but I expect the real answers will begin to come tomorrow when Putin’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov begins meetings in Ankara with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.
That meeting was set up during a May 31 telephone conversation between Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan when Putin, according to his website, “noted Russia’s willingness to facilitate unimpeded cargo shipping in coordination with its Turkish partners including grain shipments from Ukrainian ports.”
Cavusoglu told reporters on May 31, that negotiations had been underway with the United Nations to reach agreement on the creation of a corridor from the Black Sea, via the Turkish Bosporus Straits through the Dardanelles to the Aegean Sea and then to the Mediterranean Sea.
Meanwhile, U.N. officials had been meeting in Moscow on May 31, working on what U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called a “package deal” that would reopen both Ukrainian grain exports as well as Russian grain and fertilizer exports.
In New York on May 31, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield confirmed there were discussions on how to provide for the Ukrainians’ removal of mines and that the U.S. was prepared to give “comfort letters” to shipping and insurance companies to help facilitate exports of Russian grain and fertilizer. They were not directly sanctioned by the U.S., but those “companies are a little nervous and we’re prepared to give them comfort letters if that will help to encourage them,” Thomas-Greenfield said.
On June 1, Ukraine’s Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba told a nationwide Ukraine telethon audience that ideally, the military component of the grain-shipping lane would be under the aegis of the United Nations and “Russian warships will not risk rushing by and attacking Odessa from the sea.”
“We are looking for a balanced solution,” Kubela said, “which would both resume exports and ensure the country’s security. This is the key. We cannot agree to turn a blind eye on everything and unblock everything, as Russia cannot be trusted.”
Turkish President Erdogan’s spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, also spoke out last Wednesday, saying that the Turks had been talking with the Russians, Ukrainians and U.N. personnel in preparation for tomorrow’s arrival of the Lavrov delegation, which will have a military component.
“The details of this issue will become clearer during this visit next week,” Kalin said, adding, “As Turkey, we are ready to start this work as soon as possible,” indicating that the negotiations for a humanitarian grain shipping lane could go on for a week or two.
As for a Ukrainian official attending the sessions with Lavrov, and thus including a broader, land-based ceasefire agreement, Kalin said, “There is no planned visit yet. But our doors are always open to Ukrainian friends.”
On June 3, Putin met with the chairman of the African Union, Senegal’s President Macky Sall, in Sochi to talk about how to get the Ukraine grain supplies moving again.
African countries imported 44% of their wheat from Russia and Ukraine between 2018 and 2020, according to U.N. figures, and wheat prices have soared around 45% as a result of the supply disruption, according to the African Development Bank.
After the meeting, Sall wrote on Twitter, “President Putin expressed to us his willingness to facilitate the export of Ukrainian cereals,” but Sall did not say if Putin had attached any conditions to his offer.
Here is the picture of commercial ships and key Black Sea country fleets today.
According to the International Maritime Organization (IMO), some 84 merchant ships remain stranded in the Black Sea, with nearly 450 seafarers onboard. Since March, IMO has been calling for “a blue safe maritime corridor to allow the safe evacuation of seafarers and ships from the high-risk and affected areas in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov to a safe place.”
The Russian Black Sea fleet has been diminished by the April 14 loss of its flagship, the Moskva, to a Ukrainian anti-ship Neptune missile. There remain three Russian guided-missile frigates built after the 2014 Crimean crisis, four Russian landing ships, two Krivak-class guided-missile frigates, and six new Kilo-class diesel-electric attack submarines and an older Kilo-class sub.
Those ships are supported by a host of smaller and auxiliary Russian ships, including guided-missile corvettes and missile boats.
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Meanwhile, Turkey has two frigates, two submarines and a half-dozen patrol and fast-attack ships in the Black Sea, but many more vessels could be quickly summoned for escort duty, according to the Bosporus Observer.
The U.S. has no naval vessels currently in the Black Sea.
Three days after Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Cavusoglu announced that his government would legally recognize the Russian invasion as a “war.” That act provided grounds for the Turks, under the 1936 Montreux Convention, to control warships entering and leaving the Black Sea through the Bosporus and Dardanelles Straits.
Turkey cannot block Russian warships that were home-based in Black Sea ports from returning to their registered bases, but the Turks could and have refused permission for at least three other Russian warships to enter the Black Sea.
When tomorrow’s negotiations get going, I am looking at the issue Putin named as “the first point” during his Friday Rossiya 24 TV interview — “they must clear the mines…in the Black Sea [that] make it difficult to enter the ports to the south of Ukraine.”
Putin had added, “We [the Russians] are ready to do this; we will not use the demining process to initiate an attack from the sea. I have already said this.” That will never happen.
The Turks’ – Cavusoglu has already said, “Ukraine does not want Russian ships to enter Odessa, while Russia does not want other ships to use this corridor to deliver weapons to Ukraine. Both sides need confidence and guarantees.”
Bloomberg recently reported that Turkish President Erdogan’s government has offered military help to clear mines off the coast of Odessa.
That could be a start. But will both Putin and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky agree, and trust each other to take further steps necessary to open up a humanitarian food channel out of the Black Sea?
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