There is still a month until the grain export agreement expires and Ukrainians fear Moscow will refuse to extend it
The road connecting Odessa to Mikolaiv is a direct highway to the war’s southern front, the most active in recent weeks as the Ukrainian military continues to gain ground. Besides the army, another army, this time of truck drivers, risks their lives every day to go to the fields and load the grains which they later take to the silos at the ports to export them all over the world.
Mikhail and Andrii have just parked their Kamaz on the shoulder. They have a twenty-five kilometer queue ahead of them and “about a week to wait. That’s how long it took to get there and unload. It can be faster. It all depends on the ships arriving, but the average wait time is seven days when we did it in one,” says Mikhail. This experienced driver has been on the road all his life and for the last twenty-five years he has been riding his orange Russian-made machine that is ‘like a tank’ It never fails I can carry up to twenty five tons and know the roads by heart I don’t need GPS or anything Even in war with many roads closed I know how to get to places must come,” he says from a booth presided over by an icon of the Virgin. The long wait is spent with the family with the rest of the teammates, many of them old acquaintances from the asphalt.
Ukraine is one of the world’s largest grain producers and exporters, harvesting a record 86 million tons in 2021. On February 24, Russia decided to launch its invasion and this was a direct blow to an industry that could see its harvest reduced to fifty million tons, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. For 2023, the forecast is even worse due to farmers’ difficulties in winter planting. The data shows that 30% of Ukraine’s farmland is occupied or unsafe, and 160,000 square kilometers of land may have been “polluted” by landmines and other explosives.
Amid the daily fighting on the various fronts, the grain was used by Kiev and Moscow to reach an agreement in Istanbul at the end of July to ensure exports from the ports of Chornomorsk, Odessa and Yuzhny/Pivdennyi. The pact is in effect, but its duration is 120 days, meaning it will expire on November 19. If not renewed, food prices and global shortages will rise, but with things going badly on the front lines for Russia, industry insiders fear Vladimir Putin could use grain as a weapon of war.
“Putin has linked the grain export issue to the lifting of Western sanctions before and could do so again. Russia is under strong economic pressure and a return to the cessation of shipments from Ukrainian ports would put greater upward pressure on world grain prices,” analyst Eric Tegler warned in the economic publication ‘Forbes’.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was the major mediator in this pact which included the deployment of a joint ship control center in Istanbul, where Russians, Ukrainians, Turks and UN envoys work. Erdogan presented the agreement as a first step towards “a reasonable, fair and workable diplomatic solution that gives both sides an honorable exit from the crisis”.
“The most dangerous thing is to start charging at the front. We hear the explosions and see the plumes of smoke. Occasionally we are also surprised by enemy fire, but what can we do? stay home, Mikhail wonders. His cousin, Andrii, listens to the explanation and nods.
From the truck behind it, a German-made man, twenty years younger than the Kamaz, Oleg joins in the conversation. This 50-year-old man went from touring Europe with his white trailer to the grain fight because “it’s our duty as Ukrainians. It’s the way we can fight for our country. The grain is the key to our economy and every ours should lend a hand in what we can.Of course it was much more comfortable to travel through Poland, Germany, Belgium or Spain, but now we have to go forward, load and unload in the silo».
Only two million tons left the port of Odessa in August, the deputy chairman of the Agrarian Council of Ukraine, Denys Marchuk, revealed. A team effort that begins on land continues with thousands of truck drivers such as Mikail, Andreii and Oleg and ends on the boats.
Source: La Verdad
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