First Ukrainian Cargo Ship Enters Bosporus After Grain Deal Cessation – Tracking Service

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The first Ukrainian merchant ship has left the port of Odessa and entered the Bosporus Strait after the termination of the grain deal, the data of the Marine Traffic tracking service showed on Friday.

At 06:20 GMT, the ship named Joseph Schulte crossed the Bosporus Strait from the Black Sea and was heading toward its destination — the Istanbul port, according to the data.

The Joseph Schulte is indeed a cargo ship, but it is not carrying grain, the Turkish Defense Ministry said later in the day.

"There are reports that a vessel coming from Ukraine and passing through the Istanbul Strait is a grain vessel. The said vessel is a container ship, not a grain carrier," the ministry was quoted as saying by Turkish broadcaster.

Meanwhile, a Turkish diplomatic source told Sputnik that the fact that the ship passed through the Bosporus Strait did not mean that Ankara had agreed to alternative routes to the grain deal, as the strait is used for the passage of commercial ships.

"No, we have already said that we are working for the sake of resuming the grain deal. Our straits are used for the passage of commercial ships, that is their purpose," the source said when asked if the passage of the said ship meant that Turkey agreed to the creation of alternative grain corridors.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said that the container ship Joseph Schulte with more than 30,000 tons of cargo on board left the port of Odessa, where it has been docked since February 23, 2022. Kubrakov noted that it was the first ship that left the Odesa port since July 16.

On July 18, the Turkey- and UN-mediated Black Sea Grain Initiative, which provided for a humanitarian corridor to allow exports of Ukrainian grain over the past year, expired, as Russia did not renew its participation in the deal. Moscow emphasized that the deal's component on facilitating Russian grain and fertilizer exports had not been fulfilled, specifically with regard to reconnecting Russian banks to SWIFT and unblocking the Tolyatti-Odesa ammonia pipeline.