Turkish president urges Vladimir Putin to reopen Ukraine grain talks after Russian strikes on Black Sea port

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has urged Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, to reopen talks on the failed deal he brokered last summer to safeguard Ukrainian grain exports to the world after Russian night strikes destroyed ports and supplies in the Odesa region.

Fires raged at the sites of important infrastructure in the southern area on Wednesday morning while Ukraine’s defence ministry said a grain silo in Izmail, an inland port across the Danube River from Romania, had been badly damaged.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the strikes on Ukraine’s means to export grain was an attack on all.

“The world must respond,” Ukraine’s president said. “When civilian ports are targeted, when terrorists deliberately destroy even [grain] elevators, this is a threat to everyone on all continents. Russia can and should be stopped.”

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After the drone strikes, Mr Erdoğan, in a phone call to the Kremlin, invited Russia’s president to engage in fresh talks over the agreement, with a spokesperson saying the Turkish leader had “expressed the importance of refraining from steps that could escalate tensions during the Russia-Ukraine war, emphasising the significance of the Black Sea initiative, which he described as a bridge of peace”.

[ Millions to ‘pay the price’ for Russian refusal to extend Ukrainian grain export deal, says UN ]

In Moscow, Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said the Russian leader needed movement on the barriers to the free export of Russian grain and fertiliser, imposed by the restrictions on payments as part of sanctions against the Kremlin.

The Black Sea grain deal, brokered by the United Nations and Turkey a year ago, had allowed Ukraine to keep exports flowing through its deep water ports on the Black Sea to ease a global food crisis.

Russia quit the deal on July 17th, complaining that sanctions on its own grain and fertiliser exports had not been eased, and warned that ships heading to Ukrainian seaports could be considered military targets.

The shooting down of 23 Iranian-Shahed drones on Tuesday night, including 10 fired at Ukraine’s capital, highlighted the crucial role of Ukraine’s air defences, in particular the patriot systems donated by the US, but the gaps elsewhere in the country are becoming clearer.

The latest attacks on ports and industrial infrastructure – in which Ukrainian officials said 40,000 tonnes of grain were destroyed – is seemingly designed to kill off the possibility of any future deal with Kyiv on grain supply. It was condemned by the US ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, who said Russia had no empathy for people around the world reliant on Ukrainian products.

The port of Izmail, across the river from Romania, a Nato member, has served as the main alternative route out of Ukraine for grain exports since mid-July, when Russia reimposed its de facto blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.

Ukraine’s Danube River ports accounted for about a quarter of grain exports before Russia pulled out of the deal and have since become the main route out.

[ The Irish Times view on Russia’s exit from the grain deal: weaponising the world’s food supply ]

Meanwhile, President Zelenskiy said on Wednesday he hoped a Ukraine “peace summit” could be held this autumn, and that this week’s talks in Saudi Arabia were a stepping stone towards that goal.

Mr Zelenskiy told Ukrainian diplomats in a speech published on the president’s website that almost 40 countries would be represented at the meeting in Jeddah on Aug 5th and 6th.

Mr Zelenskiy and his team are working with allies to build broad support for a “peace summit” that would endorse principles to underpin a settlement to end the war. The summit would build on a 10-point plan outlined by Kyiv last autumn that has been actively promoted by Mr Zelenskiy. Ukrainian and Western officials have said the summit would not involve Russia.

In Kyiv, Sergiy Popko, head of the city military administration, said all the drones targeted at the capital on Tuesday night had been intercepted but that falling debris had damaged some non-residential buildings.

Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said no one had been killed or wounded in the attack but that “parts of a drone fell on the playground” in the Golosiivsky district.

Mr Putin, speaking at a Russia-Africa summit in St Petersburg last week, offered African leaders attending the event the gift of thousands of tonnes of grain.

“We will be ready to provide Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Mali, Somalia, Central African Republic and Eritrea with 25-50,000 tonnes of free grain each in the next three to four months,” Mr Putin told the summit, as participants applauded. Others in need, such as Sudan and Chad, were not mentioned. Global wheat prices have increased by about 10% in the past two weeks.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has said that a “handful” of donations from the Kremlin will not fix the problem of a dearth of global supply since Russia pulled out of the grain deal. - Guardian and Reuters