The first grain-carrying ship to leave Ukrainian ports in wartime safely anchored off Turkey's coast on Tuesday, the Defense Ministry said.
“The dry cargo ship RAZONI, loaded with corn, which departed from the Odessa Port of Ukraine yesterday, reached the Black Sea entrance of the Bosphorus and anchored at the place allocated to it,” the ministry wrote on Twitter.
The first ship, the Razoni, carrying 26,527 tonnes of corn to Lebanon, anchored near the Bosporus entrance from the Black Sea at around 6 p.m. GMT, some 36 hours after departing from Ukraine's Odessa port.
A delegation from the Joint Coordination Centre (JCC) in Istanbul, where Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish and U.N. personnel work, is expected to inspect the ship at 7 a.m. GMT on Wednesday, according to the Defense Ministry.
The sailing was made possible after Ankara and the United Nations brokered a grain and fertiliser export agreement between Moscow and Kyiv last month – a rare diplomatic breakthrough in a conflict that has arguably become a drawn-out war of attrition.
The exports from one of the world's top grain producers are intended to help ease a global food crisis.
"The plan is for a ship to leave ... every day," a senior Turkish official told Reuters, referring to Odessa and two other Ukrainian ports covered by the deal. "If nothing goes wrong, exports will be made via one ship per day for a while."
The official, who asked to remain anonymous, added that the Razoni's departure was delayed by a couple of days by "technical problems" that are now fixed, and NATO member Turkey expected the safe-passage corridor to function well.
As part of the agreement, the four parties are monitoring shipments and conducting inspections from the JCC in Istanbul, which straddles the Bosporus that connects the Black Sea to world markets.
