Negotiations on the grain agreement on May 5 were not successful, so they were postponed until this week

On Friday, May 5, a meeting of technical specialists of the UN, Turkey, Ukraine and the Russian Federation was held in Istanbul, and the negotiations of the deputy defense ministers of the participating countries will take place this week.

This was announced by Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, and added that "Turkey is making efforts to continue the grain initiative as planned and to make it work quickly and safely. This week, a meeting of deputy defense ministers will be held, where the issue of evacuating Turkish-flagged ships will also be discussed. which have remained in the ports of Ukraine since the beginning of the large-scale invasion of the Russian Federation".

To the question about the probability of extending the grain agreement, H. Akar answered: "After the meetings, one gets the impression that they will have a positive result. And we are actively working on it."

The Deputy Spokesman of the UN Secretary of State, Farhan Haq, said that inspections of previously agreed vessels will continue, while the agreement itself expires on May 18.

At the same time, the Secretary General of the UN Conference on Trade and Development, Rebecca Greenspan, is discussing the issue of the grain agreement in Moscow with representatives of the Russian authorities, who are making new demands for the continuation of the grain initiative.

We will remind you that recently the Russian side almost does not agree to ship inspections in the direction of the Port of Pivdenniy, because the Tolyatti-Odesa ammonia pipeline is still not working.

According to Reuters, no more than 2 vessels per day were inspected last week, while an average of 3-4 vessels were inspected daily over the past 3 weeks.

Grain exports from Ukraine for May 1-7 rose by 35% to 1.1 million tons, after slowing sharply the previous week due to a 3-day sabotage of ship inspections by Russian inspectors.