Drop in inspections delays Ukrainian grain shipments

LONDON (AP) — The amount of grain leaving Ukraine has been reduced as efforts continue to maintain shipments to developing countries under a United Nations agreement. Half as many ships are being inspected as four months ago and pending shipments are piling up as the anniversary approaches a year ago.

Ukrainian officials and some in the United States blame Russia for slowing inspections, which Moscow has denied. Less wheat, barley and other grains are flowing out of Ukraine, known as the ‘breadbasket of the world’, raising concerns about the impact of the conflict on hungry people in Africa, the Middle East and in parts of Asia, places that depend on the affordable food supply of the Black Sea region.

Separate agreements brokered last summer by Turkey and the United Nations to maintain supplies to war-torn countries and curb soaring food prices are up for renewal next month. Russia is also a major global supplier of wheat, other grains, sunflower oil and fertilizers, and authorities have complained about delays in shipments of crucial crop nutrients.

Food exports from three Ukrainian ports rose from 3.7 million tonnes in December to 3 million tonnes in January, according to the Joint Coordination Center (JCC) in Istanbul, which manages the deal. This is where inspectors from Russia, Ukraine, the United Nations and Turkey check that the ships only transport agricultural products and not weapons.

The drop in supplies is equivalent to one month’s food consumption in Kenya and Somalia combined. This follows a drop in the average number of daily inspections to 5.7 last month and 6 so far this month, from a peak of 10.6 in October.

This has contributed to a backlog of ships waiting in waters near Turkey, either for inspection or to join the Black Sea Grain Initiative. There are 152 ships on standby, according to the JCC, up 50% from January.

This month, vessels are waiting an average of 28 days from application to join the program to inspection, said Ruslan Sakhautdinov, head of the JCC’s Ukrainian delegation. This is one week more than in January.

Factors such as bad weather complicated the work of the inspectors. Demand from shipping companies to join the initiative, port activity and vessel capacity also affect the process.

“I think it will become a problem if inspections continue to be this slow,” said William Osnato, senior research analyst at agricultural research firm Gro Intelligence. “In a month or two you’ll see there’s a couple million tons that haven’t come out because it was going too slow.”

“By creating a bottleneck, you create that kind of void in traffic, but as long as they keep streaming something, it’s not a total disaster,” he added.

US officials, including USAID Administrator Samantha Power and UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, have accused Russia of being slow and said food supplies to vulnerable countries are falling behind.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said in a statement on Facebook on Wednesday that Russian inspectors had “systematically delayed inspecting ships” for months.

Both accused Moscow of obstructing the operation of the agreement and of “taking advantage of the opportunity of uninterrupted commercial traffic from Russian Black Sea ports”.

Osnato also raised the possibility of Russia delaying inspections “to do more business” after harvesting a large wheat crop. Figures from financial data firm Refinitiv show Russian wheat exports last month were 3.8 million tonnes, more than double what they were in January 2022, before the invasion.

Russian wheat shipments hit or near record highs in November, December and January, up 24% from the same months a year earlier, according to Refinitiv. The company estimated that Russia will export 44 million wheat in the 2022-2023 season.

Alexander Pchelyakov, spokesman for the Russian diplomatic delegation to the United Nations agencies in Geneva, said last month that the allegations of deliberate delays “simply are not true”.

Russian authorities have also complained that their country’s fertilizers are not being exported under the deal, casting doubt on the renewal of the four-month deal which expires on March 18.

Without tangible results, expanding the agreement is “unreasonable”, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin told RTVI, a private Russian-language television channel, on Monday.

United Nations officials said they were working to unlock Russian fertilizers and expressed hope that the deal would be extended.

“I think we’re in a little more difficult situation right now, but the fact is that I think it will be persuasive and conclusive,” Martin Griffiths, the UN’s under-secretary-general for international affairs, told reporters on Wednesday. humanitarians. “The Global South and international food security demand that this operation continue.”

Tolulope Phillips, a bakery manager in Lagos, Nigeria, has seen the effects firsthand. The cost of flour has soared 136% since the start of the war in Ukraine, he noted. Nigeria is a major importer of Russian wheat and has seen sharp increases in the price of bread and other foods.

“The survival of any business is often precarious,” Phillips said. “You have to adjust your prices to reflect the increase, and it doesn’t just affect the flour, it affects the sugar, it affects the flavors, it affects the price of diesel, it affects the price of electricity. So overall the cost of production has gone up.

Global food prices, including wheat, have fallen back to pre-war Ukraine levels after hitting record highs in 2033. In emerging economies that depend on imported food, such as Nigeria, a currency lower keeps prices high because they are paid in dollars, Osnato explained.

In addition, the drought that has hit crops in the Americas and the Middle East means that food was already expensive before Russia invaded Ukraine and worsened the food crisis, Osnato added.

Prices are expected to remain high for more than a year, he said. What is needed now is “good weather and a few harvest seasons to cope with global supplies of a number of different grains” as well as “a significant drop in world food prices”.

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AP writers Dan Ikpoyi in Lagos, Nigeria, and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.