The first export of wheat after the agreement between Ukraine and Russia is expected to leave the port of Odessa tomorrow (Sunday). This was announced by Ebrahim Kalin, the spokesman of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. According to what is reported in the Turkish media, a convoy of 16 cargo ships will leave the port of Odessa.
The integrated supervision headquarters which was established in the middle of last week in Istanbul, andincluding 20 representatives equally divided between Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the UN – will oversee the security of the convoy that is expected to arrive in Turkey’s economic waters on Wednesday using drones and satellites.
After the wheat price reached $12.78 per bushel (a unit of measure used to measure the volume of bulk dry goods) on May 17, it fell below the $10 mark on June 21 and has not risen above it since. Its current price is about $9.4 per bushel, and the expectation is that a safe and beneficial first shipment will lower the price to a range of about $8.5 per bushel – as it was before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Over time, it will also be necessary to examine the issue of wheat exports from Russia, which was itself a significant factor in the market before its invasion of Ukraine. According to data from the Russian Ministry of Agriculture, the volume of the wheat harvest in Russia decreased by 11 million tons until July 29 compared to the corresponding period last year. According to estimates, when the grain market is functioning normally, Russia and Ukraine together account for 30% of all wheat exports in the world, 20% of corn exports and 76% of sunflower exports. Therefore, the hope is that the plan, if successful, will lead to the export of more than 25 million tons of Ukrainian wheat – leading to a drop in food prices in the world.
At the same time, a real drama is taking place in Lebanon in which Ukraine is involved. The ship “Laodyssia” loaded with barley and wheat flour suspected of being stolen from Ukraine was confiscated in the port of Tripoli. This was announced by the Attorney General in Lebanon, Hassan Owaydat. According to the Ukrainian embassy in Beirut, the wheat and barley flour was loaded onto the ship in the city of Faodosia on the Crimean Peninsula, which has been under Russian occupation since March 2014. The source of the goods on the ship that docked in Lebanon last Wednesday, according to the Ukrainians, is from the regions of Zaporozhye, Mykolaiv and Kherson in the southeast Ukraine.
In fact, the Ukrainians accuse Russia of stealing half a million tons from these three districts. “The ship will remain detained until the investigation into the source of the goods is completed,” the Lebanese Attorney General told Bloomberg. What increases the suspicion regarding this ship is the identity of its owner: Syria Mar Shipping Ltd, which has been under US sanctions since 2015 due to its ties to Syrian President Bashar Assad. Therefore, the involvement of both the Russian and Syrian governments in the shipment on the ship will likely be examined.