December 4, 2018 - Ukraine resumes Grain Shipments from Azov Sea
Ukraine resumes grain shipments from Azov Sea | Reuters
KIEV - Ukraine said on Tuesday it had resumed grain shipments from the Azov Sea, blocked for around 10 days after a military standoff with Russia in the Kerch Strait off Crimea.
[...] “The passage of vessels with agricultural products through ports in the Azov Sea has been unlocked,” Ukraine’s agriculture ministry said on Tuesday in a statement.
“The loading of grain to vessels through the ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk is restored and carried out in regular mode,” it said.
Earlier, Ukraine’s infrastructure minister Volodymyr Omelyan had said the two ports - vital for eastern Ukraine’s economy - had been “partially unlocked” with the restoration of some free movement through the Kerch Strait.
December 5, 2018 - Caught in Russia-Ukraine storm: a Cargo ship and tonnes of Grain
Caught in Russia-Ukraine storm: a cargo ship and tonnes of grain | Reuters
BERDYANSK, Ukraine - When the Island Bay cargo ship arrived from Beirut at the Kerch Strait, gateway to the Azov Sea, it sailed into a perfect storm of geopolitics and bad weather.
The following day, Russia opened fire on three Ukrainian naval ships, impounded them and detained their sailors, some of them wounded. It then blocked the strait by putting a tanker underneath a new bridge it has built linking the Russian mainland to the Crimean peninsula it annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
While the world digested the implications of the Nov. 25 incident, the most explosive clash in recent years,
Russia said it had reopened the channel to the Azov Sea, which is shared by Russia and Ukraine.
But Island Bay remained at anchor outside the strait, lashed by gale force winds and sleet, its hull icing over while cargo ships amassed on either side.
On Monday, a week on, the captain reported seeing 20 vessels awaiting clearance to cross. Refinitiv data that day also showed 20 Ukraine-bound vessels held up at the strait since Nov. 25, with two others allowed through.
Meanwhile, Island Bay’s cargo of 5,500 tonnes of wheat, destined for flour mills in Libya, waited in the Ukrainian port of Berdyansk.
The saga of the ship is a window on the leverage Moscow has over Ukraine’s Azov seaboard, affecting dock workers, port operators, brokers and farmers who depend on the route.
Russia, whose coast guards began inspecting traffic in the Kerch Strait eight months ago, blamed inclement weather for the delay. But on Sunday, when the skies cleared, just a handful of ships passed through; by Monday evening, the Island Bay’s captain’s frustration was beginning to show.
“It is acceptable weather for transit. Coast guards have own opinion,” his log, seen by Reuters, said. That day, he reported seeing just two ships cross into the Azov Sea.
Ukraine says the hiatus is one of many since the Russian spot-checks began in May, when Russia opened the Kerch bridge, interrupting exports of grain and steel and imports of coal.
Moscow denies any disruption.
THE STEVEDORES
In Berdyansk’s port, where icy winds had recently ripped off the roof of a nearby shed, staff of stevedore company Ascet Shipping were reading the daily reports from the Island Bay with growing concern.
Ascet loads almost a million tonnes of Ukrainian grain a year onto cargo ships in Berdyansk and was waiting to load the Island Bay; its size means each day of waiting time costs around $2,000-$2,500, Ascet’s chief executive, Denis Rusin, said.
This has made Berdyansk an unpopular port in recent months.
“Ship owners do not want to go to Berdyansk,” said Rusin, whose clients include U.S. firm Cargill [CARG.UL], one of the world’s largest dry bulk and tank shipping companies. “Buyers are refusing to bet on passage.”
Since Russia and Ukraine clashed in the strait, Ukraine has introduced martial law in 10 regions, including the Azov Sea coast - highlighting the risks of doing business with Berdyansk.
“For us this was the worst week in recent years,” Rusin said. “Clients have stopped considering the possibility of signing contracts for delivery in January, let alone February or spring,” he said.
THE PORT
Some Ukrainian politicians have accused Moscow of trying to strangle Ukraine’s Azov Sea ports in preparation for an invasion from the east, following on from Crimea’s annexation and the subsequent breakaway of Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine.
Moscow says that idea is a fantasy dreamt up by Ukraine’s pro-Western leaders ahead of elections next year. It says it has the right to patrol the strait.
But Berdyansk’s businesses say the patrols target ships bound for Ukraine, causing damaging delays.
The recent escalation in tensions has not affected ships coming to pick up grain from the Russian side of the Azov Sea, according to Sergei Filipov, director of trading firm QAM7 Dubai, which has operations there. He said inspections have delayed travel by the usual two or three days.
On its eleventh day at anchor in Kerch Strait, with skies finally clear, Island Bay reported to Berdyansk: “We called everywhere to make guards (come and) inspect the vessel, but their intentions cannot be explained.”
The situation has sent Rusin racing to further revise down his business forecasts.
Climbing out onto the windswept roof of his office on Friday, he pointed to a single truck of grain where multiple trucks used to line up along the dock.
“We had expected to load around 150,000 tonnes over the next three months... Maybe 200,000,” he said. Now the company is preparing for anything between 50,000 tonnes and no business at all, he said.
“This was a change of plan that happened this week.”
The Azov Sea grain supply chain makes up just 2 to 3 percent of Ukraine’s agricultural exports, deputy central bank chief Dmitry Sologub said. But for the southeastern Zaporozhye region, home to 1.8 million people, it is critical.
At the government Port Authority in Berdyansk, officials said they feared for the port’s future as clients look to other locations with direct access to the Black Sea.
“Of course we would prefer (to use other ports),” said Erdem Sekreter, fleet manager at Turkey’s Bayraktar shipping group, which has two ships waiting to cross the Kerch Strait to reach the Ukrainian coast.
“It is getting more expensive for ship-owners to go to the Azov Sea – the Ukrainian side of course,” he added. “We are paying out of our pocket now.”
FARMERS AND TRADERS
Bison Group owns 40,000 hectares of arable land in Zaporozhye region and exports much of its harvest via Berdyansk.
With ship-owners raising freight charges to factor in the new risks in the Azov Sea, the costs will be passed down to grain producers, Bison deputy director Igor Serov said. “It hits agricultural producers really hard.”
Prices will have to go down by at least $10 per tonne, a trader at Atria Brokers, which handles Berdyansk grain, said.
But producers may not have other options. The railway infrastructure is not in place to send exports via Black Sea ports instead, Serov said, and transferring grain by truck to Odessa, for example, would cost an extra $40 per tonne.
Buyers are also pulling back, afraid of the risks.
“Our sales have fallen,” the Atria trader said. “It has affected us in a fundamental way.”
Every day Island Bay’s cargo sits in port, it racks up costs for traders. Grain can spoil, and storage costs are steep.
“The market is suffering... everyone along the chain is paying the price for these war games,” a grain trader said, declining to be named due to the sensitivity of the situation.
On Tuesday, Ukraine’s agriculture ministry said some grain shipments from the Azov Sea had resumed.
Five of the 14 ships headed to the Ukrainian port of Mariupol, held up since the stand-off, were still waiting to cross on Wednesday, Refinitiv data showed. One had turned back to Istanbul.
In comparison, of the ships aiming for one of Russian city Rostov-on-Don’s ports, that had arrived to Kerch Strait since the stand-off began, none were still waiting for passage, the data showed the same day.
Only one out of the six boats headed to Berdyansk had crossed by Wednesday. After twelve days at anchor in the waters near the strait, Island Bay was still waiting.
Slideshow (7 Images)
Caught in Russia-Ukraine storm: a cargo ship and tonnes of grain | Reuters
December 4, 2018 - Russian threat highest since 2014: Ukraine Military chief
Russian threat highest since 2014: Ukraine military chief | Reuters
KIEV - Russia has been ramping up its forces near the border with Ukraine since August and now poses the greatest military threat since 2014, the year Moscow annexed Crimea, the commander of Ukraine’s armed forces told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.
General Viktor Muzhenko gestured to a series of satellite images which he said showed the presence of Russian T-62 M tanks stationed 18 km (11 miles) from the Ukrainian border. (The images remind me of Israel's Netanyahu's Iran propaganda photos?)
They had more than doubled to 250 from 93 machines within the space of two weeks from mid September to Oct 1.
For Muzhenko this is evidence of a concerted build-up of Russian forces in the run-up to Nov. 25, when Russia fired on and captured three Ukrainian vessels at the Kerch Strait, an action Kiev’s leadership fears may be a precursor to a full-scale invasion.
Ukraine and Russia have traded accusations over the clash. The Kremlin’s spokesman on Monday dismissed as “absurd” the notion that Russia wanted to forcibly take over Ukrainian ports.
Muzhenko said Russian troop levels were at “the highest” since 2014, when Moscow annexed Crimea and then deployed forces to eastern Ukraine.
“In front of us is an aggressor who has no legal, moral or any other limits,” he said. “It is very difficult to predict when it will occur to him to begin active combat actions against Ukraine.”
“This (the Kerch Strait incident) was an act of aggression from regular forces, the border service (of the Russian Federation) in relation to the Ukrainian armed forces,” Muzhenko said.
The Russian defense ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Muzhenko said Ukraine had deployed more land and air forces to the region in response, and intensified military exercises across the country, but declined to go into specifics.
He added that Ukraine expects to complete the building of a military base on the Azov Sea, which had been planned before the navy clash, by next year.
Ukraine was also expecting help from allies, mostly the United States, for equipment including air and naval reconnaissance, boats and weapons for ground troops, he said.
COLLAPSE OF RELATIONS
Relations between Ukraine and Russia collapsed following the 2014 Crimea annexation and Russia’s support for separatist rebels in the eastern Donbass region.
The Donbass conflict has killed more than 10,000 people despite a notional ceasefire. Russia strongly denies sending troops and heavy weapons to the area.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko introduced martial law last week for a period of 30 days in regions of the country thought most vulnerable to a Russian attack.
Asked whether the military would need an extension once the 30 days of martial law expired, he said an assessment would be made closer to the time. “The term of martial law depends on the Russian Federation,” he said.
“Based on how it will increase its capabilities, how it will react, how it will provoke and carry out such provocations - not like in the Kerch Strait but also on a larger scale - the legal regime that will be defined in Ukraine depends on it.”
From around August, Russia had ramped up its deployment of forces on the Ukrainian border, he said. Some units were transferred from Russia’s far east to the Ukrainian border in September during Vostok-2018, Russia’s biggest war games since the fall of the Soviet Union.
“We are seeing an increase in the intensity of operational and combat training measures, and all of them, as a rule, are offensive in nature,” he said.
He said there was a “serious increase” in the amount of troops and weapons in Crimea and Russia had also doubled its naval presence in the region in the past month.
“The combination of all these signs confirms the aggressiveness of the intentions and the threats of a military nature against Ukraine, which are constantly increasing,” he said.
Slideshow (2 Images)
Russian threat highest since 2014: Ukraine military chief | Reuters
December 5, 2018 - Russia holds Drills in Black Sea region amid Ukraine tensions
Russia holds drills in Black Sea region amid Ukraine tensions | Reuters
MOSCOW - Russia is holding naval and surface-to-air missile drills in the Black Sea region amid tensions with Ukraine and the West over the capture of three Ukrainian naval ships and their crews off the coast of Crimea last month.
Two submarines, the Rostov-on-Don B-237 and the Stary Oskol B-262, practiced emergency deployments for detecting, accompanying and destroying sea and coastal targets with rocket fire, the Defense Ministry said.
Submarine crews from the Black sea fleet were also due to practice deep dives and to work on techniques such as emergency surfacing, it said.
The statement did not give a start or end date for the drills or say if the submarine exercises were part of larger-scale drills in the Black Sea and on the Crimean peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.
A navigation warning to shipping published by littoral state Turkey’s navy said that “firing exercises” were expected in the region from Dec. 3 to Dec. 9.
Separately, Pantsir medium-range surface-to-air missile systems in the east of Crimea practiced detecting, identifying and shooting down aerial targets, Interfax news agency cited a spokesman for the Black Sea Fleet as saying.
The exercises come at a time of heightened tensions between Russia and the West over Russia’s seizure on Nov. 25 of two small Ukrainian armored artillery vessels and a tug boat and their crews.
NATO foreign ministers discussed the Black Sea region with Ukraine and Georgia’s foreign ministers on Tuesday while NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the U.S.-led military alliance had boosted its presence there in response to what he said were Russia’s aggressive actions.
December 5, 2018 - Ukraine Council to meet on December 15 to form Independent Church: President 
Ukraine council to meet on December 15 to form independent church: president | Reuters
KIEV - A Ukrainian church council will meet on December 15 in order to create an independent Orthodox church and elect its leader, President Petro Poroshenko said on Wednesday.
Under Poroshenko’s presidency, Ukraine has pushed to establish a national church and thereby sever centuries-old ties with the Russian clergy. The Kiev authorities say the step is essential to tackling Russian meddling on its soil.
“The synod will be held on December 15, 2018 in St. Sophia (Cathedral), which for centuries has been the center of the Orthodox Ukrainian religious life,” Poroshenko said.
)
