Envoy: Türkiye not to process grain from occupied Ukrainian lands

Ukrainian Ambassador to Türkiye Vasyl Bodnar has said that Ukraine controls Türkiye not to process grain from the occupied Ukrainian territories.

“We control the situation, law enforcement agencies collect information on each ship. We have established ties between the Turkish Ministry of Justice and the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office due to the cases that we have already observed. The monitoring is underway,” Bodnar said in an interview with Ukrinform.

The ambassador explained that if the ships leave Sevastopol or Kerch, enter Russia’s Kavkaz port and receive Russian documents there, then Ukraine will react and try to prevent Ukrainian grain to be supplied to the Turkish ports labeled as Russian grain.

Bodnar assures that the Turkish side is sensitive to this issue and the situations which were observed in summer 2022 will not reoccur.

A ship from occupied Berdyansk entered the Turkish coast with a cargo of stolen grain in July 2022. However, the crew of "Zhibek Zholy" ship was not detained, despite the request of the Ukrainian side for arrest. The ambassador explained that the Turkish side’s decision on this vessel did not fully satisfy Ukraine. 

“However, the work was continued and progress was made in preventing ships with stolen Ukrainian grain from entering Turkish ports thanks to the joint efforts of the Ukrainian and Turkish sides,” Bodnar added.