ANKARA, August 22. /TASS/. Substantial progress has been made at consultations on renewing the grain deal, Turkey’s Yeni Safak newspaper said citing a source in Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s office.

"Significant progress has been achieved on a grain corridor agreement. An alternative route of the grain corridor without Russia is irrational," the newspaper quoted the source as saying.

According to the source, Ankara thinks that "an agreement can be somehow reached" between Russia and Ukraine. "Our priority is renewing the grain corridor agreement," the source told the newspaper noting that other steps "may be dangerous."

The Black Sea grain deal ceased to function on July 17. After agreeing several times since the inception of the grain deal in July 2022 to extend the agreement to provide a shipping corridor across the Black Sea for vessels carrying Ukrainian grain, Moscow reiterated that the Russia-related provisions of the accords on the removal of obstacles to agricultural exports were never implemented. Russia also highlighted the fact that, although the agreements were intended to direct food supplies to the poorest countries, the bulk of Ukrainian grain had gone to wealthy Western countries. The Kremlin said that the Russian side would consider resurrecting the grain initiative as soon as its conditions were met.

On August 10, the Ukrainian navy announced "temporary corridors" in the Black Sea for merchant ships going to or from the ports of Chernomorsk, Odessa and Yuzhny. However, Kiev warned that a military threat and mine danger remained on the route and, therefore, only those ships whose owners and captains "officially confirm their readiness to sail in these conditions" are being allowed to pass. There were reports that the routes would be used primarily to enable civilian ships stuck at dock in these Ukrainian ports since late February 2022 to depart. On August 16, the Hong Kong-flagged container carrier Joseph Schulte departed from the port of Odessa where it had been anchored since the beginning of Russia’s special military operation, and left Ukraine’s territorial waters, becoming the first merchant vessel to do so since the demise of the grain deal.

Earlier, the Russian Defense Ministry said that, due to the termination of the grain deal, Moscow would deem all vessels traversing the Black Sea bound for Ukrainian ports to be carriers of military cargo, effective 12:00 a.m. Moscow time on July 20. It specified that the flag states of such vessels would in turn be deemed as parties to the Ukrainian conflict on the side of the Kiev regime. The ministry also declared certain areas in international waters in the northwestern and southeastern Black Sea to be temporarily dangerous for navigation.