Ukrainian wheat: challenge of preserving a fragile agreement

At a time when the war between Russia and Ukraine entered its sixth month, good news had finally emerged, Friday, July 22. While the conflict tends to get bogged down on the military field, kyiv and Moscow have managed to sign an agreement supposed to allow the reopening of Ukrainian ports for the resumption of wheat exports. It does not matter that the belligerents did not sit around the same table to initial it. The main thing was to prevent cereal shortages on the world market that threaten several developing countries with famine.

It is still necessary that the solution found under the aegis of the United Nations and Turkey is applicable. The ink of the barely dry agreement, Russian missiles struck the port of Odessa, Saturday July 23, showing that, in this conflict, the rare good news remain of extreme fragility. If the Russians have not violated the letter of the agreement, they clearly flout their minds. This consists in creating secure navigation corridors in the Black Sea in order to transport the grain stored mainly to Odessa, Tchornomorsk and Ioujne to Africa and Asia. kyiv intends to protect his merchant ships from Russian attacks, while Moscow wants to make sure that the boats entering Ukrainian ports do not carry weapons. The challenge consists in effectively enforcing these two postulates.

If this advance has initially brought calm to the trading markets, Vladimir Putin, with these shots on Odessa, wanted to add an Addenda consisting that, if he is capable of good gestures will, he nevertheless intends to remain master of the game.

However, the master of the Kremlin has no interest in making this agreement decade. On the one hand, it allows it to loosen the Western vice for its own exports. Above all, it contributes to the Moscow propaganda account that Russia is not the disorder worker in the supplies of African and Asian countries who have not wished, until now, to take the side of the West in This war.

First diplomatic success

It is rare that the UN criticizes the actions of one of the members of the Security Council. The immediate conviction of Russian missile fire by the organization spokesperson shows that Vladimir Putin will not be able to maintain tension as he pleases without endangering the application of the agreement. However, he has an immense merit: he does not make a loser. Russia is of interest, but also Ukraine who will be able to empty its silos to accommodate the new harvest and garner precious currencies. The UN, which has hitherto been set back in this war, thus won its first diplomatic success.

As for Turkey from Recep Tayyip Erdogan, it is an important step to improve its image within NATO, which was fairly tarnished by its ambiguities. A drone supplier to Ukraine, Ankara remains the only member of the Atlantic Alliance to have not applied sanctions with regard to Russia. What could have been interpreted as a lack of loyalty appears, by the light of this agreement, as useful pragmatism.

Sergei Lavrov, the chief of Russian diplomacy, began a series of visits on Sunday July 24 to reassure the countries that are on the currently blocked wheat deliveries. Continue in parallel to maintain a climate of insecurity in the Ukrainian ports would be counterproductive and would have the effect of recalling that this agreement remains at the mercy of cynicism and the unpredictability of Vladimir Putin.

/Media reports.