I never came across good reporting on the Ukr grain deal. I understand it had two parts. One dealt with a safe transport corridor. The other dealt with not having an embargo on Russian grain. I recently heard that the west sanctioned the ships carrying the Russian grain instead. So clever.
Now from some sailor's telegram channel I read a detailed account on part of the grain deal.
I heard that Ukraine had created the Crimean bridge bomb, then shipped it out through the corridor on a boat to another Black Sea port then onto a truck then back to the bridge. That is the Russian version as they said they tracked the cargo through several countries.
Now I heard that the aerial drones and maybe one of the semi submersible drones used to attack Sevastopol were launched from a ship in the safe corridor. One semi submersible was captured along with the video. If true this explains why the Russians were upset over the grain deal.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad/18269THE BIG GRAIN SWINDLE
Or a black mark in the Black Sea.
#OPINION #GRAIN
1/2
I took part of the title of this article out of respect for the Sex Pistols band, and the book The Great Rock'n'roll Swindle, written by their manager, is an integral part of all punk rock history. So, the name immediately came to mind as my ship anchored just south of Bozcaada Island, awaiting passage through the Dardanelles, the first of the two Turkish straits that open up the Black Sea to the shipping. The second strait is the Bosphorus. The two are 130 nautical miles apart and are separated by the Sea of Marmara. This article is an analysis of the data I have from a carrier at sea on a Liberian-flagged merchant vessel.
My ship is sailing to Ukraine on its not-very-best of days, to say the least, for corn. All the Russian crew are disembarked, only Ukrainians and Filipinos remain on board. I am a Crimean citizen my hometown is Sevastopol. That means that for the Ukrainian authorities I am a separatist, a turncoat and an enemy. I am going ashore in the second strait, in the Bosphorus. But that is better than the uncertainty caused by the harsh reality of lawlessness that has been operating in Ukraine long before the events of February 24. After February 24, for ordinary Russian seafarers in Ukrainian ports it became even worse. Harsh interviewing, fact-checking on social media, offers of cooperation/recruitment, removal from the vessel under various pretexts contrary to international conventions followed by an exchange (remember the Svir ship crew), torture, extortion, etc. Erdogan, hold my beer, I'm packing a suitcase.
What can I say, when the Ukrainian citizens, the crew members themselves, had their jaws dropped when the note came with the details of the next voyage, together with the port of loading Yuzhny (now called Pivdenny port, renamed recently so as not to associate anything with the Russian language), which is located just north of Odessa. Jaws dropped, because Ukrainian seafarers themselves understand that they also will be interviewed and fact-checked, that uncomfortable questions await them, that anything can happen in the port, and that representatives of various departments can come on board. The provocative bravado with which they sang the Ukrainian anthem, with a glass in their hand, faded away, out of the chat. They and their ship are on their way to Ukraine and they are not laughing.
So we dropped anchor near the entrance to the Dardanelles. Just so you understand, this happens very rarely. It used to be possible to take a pilot across the strait immediately upon arrival or to pass the strait without a pilot at all. But it all comes down to the three operating Ukrainian grain ports in the Black Sea: the port of Yuzhny, Odessa and Chernomorsk (formerly Illyichevsk).
The grain deal, which was formalised recently between Turkey, Russia, Ukraine and the EU, is conditional upon the creation of a special corridor, the HSTC (High Seas Transit Corridor) in Ukrainian territorial waters, which in turn is part of the MHC (Maritime Humanitarian Corridor) in the Black Sea, in force for the duration of the deal itself. What this mean is: a two-mile-wide corridor has been created, and vessels traveling to and from Ukrainian ports are lined up in a caravan to which no warships of either party are allowed within ten miles of each other. The coordinating body for all this is also the JCC (Joint Coordination Centre). The grain treaty itself has a deadline of November 22 this year. If in the beginning everything was working like clockwork and more than two hundred bulk carriers have already fulfilled their voyage obligations to deliver Ukrainian grain crops to various countries, now the deal is in jeopardy and here's why.(continued in the next post)
https://t.me/Slavyangrad/18270(continued from previous post)
In a nutshell, the Crimean bridge. After the eighth of October, everything turned upside down. The terrorist act involving Ukraine (along with its ports) with several EU member states (read: parties to the grain deal) was unleashed (
https://t.me/doppelfod/181) and fundamentally changed the tactical component of the special military operation that Russia is conducting.
— fodeve (
http://t.me/doppelfod), writing for @SevMob
Source: @SevMob /
https://t.me/sevmob/515
