At the meeting between Putin and Erdogan on September 2 (September 4), the resumption of Ukraine’s agricultural exports through the Black Sea will be discussed
Two people were injured in a Russian drone attack on a port in the Odessa region of Ukraine this Sunday (September 3, 2023), according to local authorities. The attack comes a day before a planned meeting between President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss resuming an agreement to export Ukrainianproduced grain through the Black Sea.
Russian forces fired 25 Iranianmade Shahed drones along the Danube in the early hours of Sunday (September 3), 22 of which were shot down by antiaircraft missiles, the Ukrainian Air Force said in a Telegram post.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak described the attack on Sunday (September 3) as part of Russian efforts to “provoke a food crisis and hunger in the world.”
In July 2022, about six months after the start of the war between Russia and Ukraine, the two countries signed an agreement allowing civilian ships to sail through the Black Sea to export Ukrainian grain.
The agreement aimed to prevent a global food crisis and allowed the reopening of Ukrainian ports in the south occupied by the Russian army, freeing up the flow of tons of grain from Ukraine. The blockade at the start of the war led to a global rise in food prices, increasing global shortages and threatening food security.
After almost a year of the agreement and three extensions, Russia decided to withdraw from the international agreement on July 17, 2023. The agreement was signed on July 22 last year through the mediation of Turkey and the United Nations.
After Putin withdrew from the initiative, Erdogan vowed to renew deals that helped avert a food crisis in parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia. The meeting, scheduled for Monday (September 4), is part of the Turkish president’s efforts to persuade Putin to rejoin the grain deal.
The meeting between the two leaders will take place in Sochi, on Russia’s southern coast, after several weeks of speculation about the date and location of the meeting. Erdogan had previously said that Putin would visit Turkey in August.