2023-07-18 10:48:56
Harvest in a field ten kilometers from the front line, around a crater left by a Russian rocket in the Dnipro region, Ukraine, July 4, 2022. EFREM LUKATSKY / AP
Between Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin, there was no last-minute phone call. This time, the Turkish president was unable to convince the head of the Kremlin to extend the agreement between Moscow and Kiev, orchestrated during the summer of 2022 by Ankara, to secure, under the aegis of the United Nations, the export of Ukrainian cereals via the Black Sea. At a time when the northern hemisphere is harvesting, the suspension of this quadripartite arrangement, which has allowed the export of 33 million tonnes of cereals since July 2022, should have little immediate impact. But, over time, it risks creating inflationary pressures on world markets.
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The last boat out of the Black Sea with Ukrainian grain was inspected in Istanbul on Monday evening. This was the 1,972nd inspection conducted by the UN since August 1, 2022. The agreement until then allowed ships to safely bypass the Russian blockade on Ukrainian ports and sail to the Bosphorus Strait and then to reach global markets. From now on, the most immediate effect of the suspension is military: the Russian army, bound by the agreement not to target these ships, has de facto regained its freedom of maneuver.
A few hours after the expiration of the agreement, on the night of Monday July 17 to Tuesday July 18, Ukrainian “port infrastructure” was damaged by a Russian missile attack on Odessa, according to a statement from the Ukrainian army. The situation is all the more perilous as tensions have increased in the Black Sea since the explosions that occurred on the night of Sunday July 16 to Monday July 17 on the bridge linking Russia to Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014. he attack, which killed two civilians, caused extensive damage to the road section of the structure, disrupting the delivery of equipment to the Russian army towards the Ukrainian front. “Of course there will be a response from Russia. The Ministry of Defense is preparing appropriate proposals »said Vladimir Putin.
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Application for reintegration into the Swift system
On the economic front, Moscow has not closed all the doors. Monday July 17 in the morning, a few hours before the expiry of the agreement, fixed at midnight Istanbul time (11 p.m. in Paris), the spokesman of the Kremlin Dmitri Peskov warned: the agreement can be operational “when the part on the Black Sea concerning Russia will be implemented”. Expert in negotiations, Recep Tayyip Erdogan wanted to be optimistic. “President Putin wants this humanitarian bridge to be maintained”he assured, suggesting a telephone conversation between the two presidents on Wednesday.
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