Grain Is Starting To Ship From Ukrainian Ports But It Might Be Too Late For Starving Millions

Grain Is Starting To Ship From Ukrainian Ports But It Might Be Too Late For Starving Millions

Share to Linkedin For six months, ships filled with grain have been sitting idle in ports along the Black Sea, victims of Russia's unprovoked attack on Ukraine. Now some of those ships are moving, navigating the perils of a war zone with cargo of sometimes sketchy quality. "It only takes one missile to fly across the place and hit something, and then it all stops," says John Rich, chairman of Ukrainian agriculture giant MHP, which has continued operations in the country even while many of its competitors left when war broke out. "There's light in the tunnel with the ports. But the tunnel could close rapidly. It only takes one act, and that's gone. It's a high risk." Earlier this week, the first ship to leave the port of Odessa, the Sierra Leone-flagged Razoni, stalled and anchored in the Mediterranean Sea near Turkey, according to the government of Lebanon. Carrying a cargo of 26, 527 tons of corn, the ship's original destination is Lebanon. The first shipments are making their way out of Ukraine towards destinations in the Middle East and Africa where millions have been struggling through a worsening hunger crisis. There are now pockets of starvation worsened by