The Continuation of the Black Sea Grain Initiative

On March 18, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the United Nation announced the extension of the International agreement “Black Sea Grain Initiative” on the export of Ukrainian grain. Signed in july 2022, it helps control the global food crisis created by the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

As drafted, the grain export agreement should be automatically extended for the same 120 day period unless either party wished to amend or teminate the agreement. A first prolongation has already taken place in November 2022. Russia, unhappy of the implementation of the second one, has specified that the third would only be for 60 days.

Turkish, which hosts the Joint Coordination Center, needs to speed up vessels controls to make grain exports more fluid. Negotiationsare underway to add new portsin the Mykolayev area to the actual 3 ports Chornomorsk, Odessa and Yuzhny/Pivdennyi.

Ukraine is of the largest grain exporters in the world. This initiative allows the exportation of about 25 millions of tons of corn, wheat and others grains.

Moscow expects compromises on international bank payments, insurance, logistics and ammonia supplies via the Togliatti-Odessa pipeline.