Russian and Ukrainian officials would not sit at the same table. At the Istanbul ceremony on July 22, 2022, their flags were moved so they no longer stood side by side, Reuters reported, even as the two countries put their names to a deal to reopen Ukraine’s Black Sea ports for grain.
The accord came after two months of talks brokered by the United Nations and Turkey. Defense and infrastructure ministers from the two sides attended, along with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan. “Today, there is a beacon on the Black Sea,” Guterres told the gathering. “A beacon of hope.”
It was not a single document. Ukraine signed with Turkey and the U.N., and Russia signed a separate “mirror” agreement with the same two parties. A further pact eased Russian food and fertilizer exports, and the U.N. welcomed U.S. and European Union clarifications that their sanctions would not apply to those shipments.
How the corridor worked
The ports of Odesa, Chernomorsk and Yuzhny were covered. Ukrainian pilots guided ships through safe channels in Ukrainian waters, since Ukraine had mined offshore areas against Russia’s invasion. A Joint Coordination Center in Istanbul monitored the ships on their way to the Bosphorus and on to world markets. Returning vessels were inspected at a Turkish port by representatives of all parties, a step meant to answer Russian worries about weapons smuggling.
One U.N. official described the safe passage as a “de facto ceasefire” for the ships and facilities covered, though the word does not appear in the text. The deal ran 120 days and could be renewed.
Russia’s Black Sea fleet had blockaded Ukrainian ports, trapping tens of millions of tonnes of grain in silos and stranding ships. Moscow denied responsibility for the food crisis. It blamed Western sanctions for slowing its own exports and blamed Ukraine for mining the approaches to its ports.
“The fact that two parties at war, and still very much at war, have been able to negotiate an agreement of this kind, I think that’s unprecedented,” one U.N. official said. Kyiv presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak warned of “an immediate military response” to any provocation.
The record, and the end
The first ship left a Ukrainian port on August 1, 2022. The deal was extended in November 2022, again in March 2023 and again in May 2023. By mid-July 2023, more than 1,000 voyages had carried nearly 33 million tonnes of grain and other food to dozens of countries, and 57 percent of exports went to developing nations.
It did not last. Russia said it would not renew unless its demands were met, among them reopening an ammonia pipeline to Odesa and reconnecting the Russian Agricultural Bank to the SWIFT payments system. By July 17, 2023, no renewal had been agreed and the deal expired. The coordination center was disbanded the same day.
