- The Razoni left Odesa on August 1 and travelled through the Black Sea carrying Ukrainian maize.
- It was originally en route to Lebanon, carrying 26,000 metric tonnes of corn for poultry feed.
- The buyer of the maize in Lebanon later refused to accept the consignment because it arrived later than agreed.
Ukrainian embassy in Beirut, the first grain ship to leave Ukraine under a wartime agreement had its cargo resold numerous times, and there is now no knowledge regarding its location or cargo destination.
The Razoni, a Sierra Leone-flagged ship that left Odesa on August 1 and travelled through the Black Sea carrying Ukrainian maize, was later inspected in Turkey. It was originally en route to Lebanon, carrying 26,000 metric tonnes of corn for poultry feed. The buyer of the maize in Lebanon later refused to accept the consignment because it arrived considerably later than agreed.
The Razoni’s tracker has been turned off for three days, and it was last seen off the east coast of the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.
It was unclear whether the Razoni had turned off its tracker because it was on its way to a port in Syria, a Russian ally that Ukraine had accused of importing grain stolen from Ukraine.
Syria is also sanctioned by the West as a result of an 11-year conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands. Syrian port officials could not be reached for comment immediately.
“Our task has been to reopen seaports for grain cargo and it has been done,” Ukraine’s embassy in Beirut said in a statement in English, adding that to date, 16 vessels have left Ukraine carrying more than 450,000 tons of agricultural products since a breakthrough agreement was brokered by Turkey and the United Nations with Russia and Ukraine.
According to the embassy, the Razoni was the first vessel to leave Ukraine under the agreement and later passed inspection in Istanbul before proceeding to its destination.
“We have no knowledge regarding the vessel’s status or cargo destination,” it said. “We also have information that the package was resold a few times after that.”
“We are not liable for (the) vessel and cargo, especially after it departed Ukraine, and especially after vessel’s departure from foreign port,” the embassy stated.
The Black Sea region is known as the world’s breadbasket, with Ukraine and Russia serving as major global producers of wheat, corn, barley, and sunflower oil, which millions of poor people in Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia rely on for existence.
An estimated 20 million tonnes of grain, the most of which is claimed to be earmarked for cattle, has been trapped in Ukraine since the beginning of the 6-month-old conflict.
