The first ship loaded with grain to leave from Ukraine, which is headed for Tripoli, will not arrive on Sunday as had been expected. The Ukrainian embassy in Beirut announced on Saturday that the arrival of the Sierra Leone-flagged dry cargo ship Razoni is “postponed,” and provided no information on the reason. The AFP news service cited an anonymous source as saying that the ship might bypass docking in Lebanon if the owner of the cargo sells it elsewhere.
Lebanon is facing a serious shortage of bread and other basic foodstuffs.
The grain had been stuck in Ukraine since the Russian invasion six months ago. The Razoni is carrying 26.5 tons of grain and had been expected to arrive in Tripoli on Sunday. The shipment comes after a United Nations- and Turkish-brokered agreement with Kyiv and Moscow. They signed a deal on July 22 to reopen three Ukrainian ports — Odesa, Chernomorsk, and Yuzhny. A joint coordination center in Istanbul, made up of representatives from Turkey, the UN, Russia and Ukraine is overseeing Ukrainian grain exports by merchant ships from the three Ukrainian Black Sea ports.
The announcement of the postponement of the shipment comes a day after three ships loaded with grain and other food supplies left Ukrainian ports, headed to Turkey for inspection.