Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu met Wednesday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Ankara in an effort to stave off a global food crisis by restarting Ukrainian grain exports along a sea corridor. The UN’s plan to do so was “reasonable,” Çavuşoğlu said, and the talks were fruitful, but more talks were needed with Moscow and Kyiv to ensure ships’ safety. The Turkish foreign minister also said he perceived that Moscow and Kyiv were willing to return to negotiations for a possible cease-fire. Lavrov said it was up to Ukraine to solve the grain shipment problem by deminig its Black Sea ports and that Russia needed to take no action because it had already made the necessary commitments. “We state daily that we’re ready to guarantee the safety of vessels leaving Ukrainian ports and heading for [Turkish waters]; we’re ready to do that in cooperation with our Turkish colleagues,” he said after the talks with Çavuşoğlu. But, Lavrov said, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had “categorically refused” to resolve the mined ports’ problem.
Ukraine has said it would only start shipments with “effective security guarantees,” and that it feared Moscow could use the potential corridor to move on its southern port of Odesa.
Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine halted Kyiv’s Black Sea grain exports. The UN appealed to the two sides, as well as neighbor and NATO member Turkey, to agree to a corridor. Turkey has the second-largest army in NATO and a substantial navy, but the head of the Ukrainian grain traders union said on Wednesday Ankara was not powerful enough to act as a guarantor.