U.N. Leader Hails ‘Encouraging’ Steps to Free Ukraine’s Grain

BRUSSELS — Russian and Ukrainian negotiators met Wednesday in Istanbul, in the increasingly desperate effort to release huge amounts of grain from Ukraine’s ports and ship it to a world facing rising hunger.

Officials have tried for months to break the impasse without triggering an escalation in the war or, worse, a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO. Wednesday’s meeting had raised hopes for a breakthrough, but ended without a comprehensive deal.

“This was a first meeting, the progress was extremely encouraging. We hope that the next steps will allow us to come to a formal agreement,” António Guterres, the secretary general of the United Nations, told reporters in New York after the one-and-a-half hour meeting ended.

The urgency is real. Failing to move the grain already at the ports and in silos in the coming weeks will begin to hamper the summer harvest, as farmers will have no place to store their fresh crop.

Hulusi Akar, the Turkish defense minister who was hosting the talks, said in a statement that the Ukrainian and Russian negotiators would meet again in Istanbul next week, and that a coordination center with representatives from both sides would be set up there.

In interviews, more than half a dozen officials directly involved or briefed on the plans cited obstacles to an agreement that ranged from the mundane to the downright “Mission Impossible.”

The war in Ukraine is already contributing to a global food crisis that has sent the price of vital commodities like wheat and barley to historic highs.

The most immediate and consequential fallout is looming famine in the Horn of Africa, where years of rain failures are already devastating communities in Somalia and parts of neighboring countries. Ukraine, the world’s fourth-largest exporter of grains, is a key source for that region.

The international diplomatic efforts are being hampered by problems that include circumnavigating mines in the Black Sea, arranging at-sea inspections of the cargo, and, crucially, convincing the Kremlin it has an interest in playing ball.

Dozens of officials, experts and diplomats are involved in talks and plans, officials interviewed said.

The European Union is worried the U.N. and Turkish efforts won’t bear fruit immediately, and has been trying to make marginal improvements in half a dozen small-scale land and river routes out of Ukraine and into friendly neighboring countries, officials said.

Those efforts have been bedeviled by logistical issues, including the different railway gauges used in Ukraine and E.U. countries, expired locomotive licenses and dredging needed for the Danube River.

One emerging route that the European Union and Romania are working on intensively is through the Danube Delta. Ukrainian officials estimate that, with the right measures, half a million tons a month can be added to the capacity of the passage bringing the total up to approximately one million tons.

Critics of the approach say it is extremely laborious and ultimately miniscule. E.U. officials concede that, at best, those efforts can move just 5 million tons per month. Ukrainian officials estimate about eight million tons need to be leaving the country every month to maintain historical export flows, so, even with improvements, the smaller routes being used will still fall short.

The U.N.-Turkey plan under negotiation would require a tremendous level of trust between Ukraine and Russia — a scarce commodity itself — as well as impeccable execution on a grand scale.

At the Group of 7 industrialized nations meeting in Germany late last month, Mr. Guterres, the U.N. secretary general, told leaders he was optimistic that a breakthrough was in the offing in a week to ten days, according to several officials briefed on the talks, or who had listened in. That was more than two weeks ago.

The Ukrainian government had asked for security assurances, that the Russians would not attack if some mines were removed. They sought long-range missiles to strike Russian submarines miles offshore, and NATO-member escorts for grain ships.

Instead, Mr. Guterres told G-7 leaders that the Ukrainians, who have mapped the mines, agreed to remove only a few of them and have their own Navy or Coast Guard captains steer the freighters out to international waters, officials said. Then foreign crews would take over and take the ships to Istanbul, before continuing on to other destinations.

A key sticking point so far has been the issue of inspecting the vessels and cargo: the Russian side has demanded that it alone carry out inspections to make sure that the vessels are carrying only grain, and that on return, they are empty, and not taking any weapons back to Ukraine. One diplomat from a U.N. Security Council country said that a compromise was being worked out with Turkish officials carrying out the checks.

The U.N. and Turkey-led negotiations also include a promise to help Russia, another major food exporter, ship its fertilizer and grain.

Russian grains and fertilizers are not banned, but Russia says its insurance and shipping costs have skyrocketed since its invasion of Ukraine and the designation of the Black Sea as a war zone.

“All these matters are being discussed with the direct involvement of U.N. Secretary-General Guterres,” he added, according to a transcript posted on the Kremlin website. “Top Russian Government officials and I are in constant working contact with our colleagues at the U.N.”

But Western officials have put the blame squarely on Russia, not least because its troops have destroyed or plundered grain stocks in Ukraine and even tried to sell them overseas. The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, has said Mr. Putin is weaponizing hunger in the developing world.

At the Group of 20 meeting last week in Bali, Indonesia, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said, “Again and again, we heard calls from across the world represented in that room for Russia to open the Black Sea for Ukrainian grain shipments.” The United States supports the Turkish-U.N. effort to broker a compromise, he added, “and we need Russia to fully cooperate with it.”

The U.N. said it could not comment on the details of the talks because of sensitive nature and the potential for them to fall apart at the last minute, but an update to the talks could come as early as Wednesday, according to spokesman Farhan Haq.

“Our discussions are continuing and we are hopeful that they will bear fruit, but we cannot comment on what stage we are at just yet,” Mr. Haq said.

Reporting was contributed by Farnaz Fassihi in New York and Gülsin Harmat in Istanbul.