ISTANBUL, Turkey —
Turkey on Wednesday formally opened a joint coordination center for
Ukrainian grain exports under a UN-backed deal aimed at resuming shipments for
the first time since Russia’s February invasion of its neighbor.
اضافة اعلان
Turkish Defense
Minister Hulusi Akar unveiled the center at a ceremony held five days after
Moscow and Kyiv put their names on a deal designed to deliver wheat and other
grain across the
Black Sea from three designated Ukrainian ports.
But a Russian
missile strike Saturday on Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odessa threatened to
immediately unravel the first deal signed by the warring parties since the war
started.
“The staff
working at this center are aware that the eyes of the world are upon them,”
Akar told reporters in his opening address.
“It is our hope
that the center will make the greatest contribution possible to humanitarian
needs and peace.”
The center will
be staffed by civilian and military officials from the two warring parties and
delegates from Turkey and the UN.
Their primary
assignment involves monitoring the safe passage of Ukrainian grain ships along
established routes and overseeing their inspection for banned weapons on the
way into and out of the Black Sea.
Akar said ships
will be inspected by “joint teams” and monitored by satellite from the center
at an Istanbul military academy.
Ukraine announced
the resumption of operations at the three Black Sea ports designated by the
deal at the same time as Akar formally unveiled the Istanbul center.
Officials in Kyiv
said they hope to send the first grain ships to world markets later this week.
‘We were worried’
The blockage of deliveries
from two of the world’s biggest grain exporters has contributed to a spike in
prices that has made food imports prohibitively expensive for some of the
world’s poorest countries.
UN estimates say nearly 50 million people began to
face “acute hunger” around the world as a direct consequence of the war.
NATO member Turkey has taken pride in being able to
maintain open diplomatic relations with both
Moscow and Kyiv throughout the
conflict.
The deal came together just days after Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed Ukraine with his Russian counterpart
Vladimir Putin in Tehran.
Erdogan is due to meet Putin again in the Russian
leader’s Black Sea retreat in Sochi on August 5.
But Ankara has also issued measured criticism of
Russia’s strike on Odessa last Saturday.
“The Odessa attack worried everyone. We were worried
too,” Foreign Minister
Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an online interview on
Wednesday.
“At the end, this was not an attack that could have
blocked the harbor’s functioning. But this kind of attack should not be
repeated. We hope that the agreement might function without any issues.”
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