Ukrainian Exports May Leap to 5 Million Tons in December

A senior Ukrainian government official stated today, Tuesday, that "Ukrainian exports through the alternative Black Sea corridor may jump to five million tons in December, up from 3.8 million in November," as reported by the Russian news agency Interfax. Ukraine opened the corridor along the western Black Sea coast near Romania and Bulgaria in August after Moscow withdrew from the UN-brokered grain export agreement in July and threatened to treat all ships as potential military targets. Yuri Vaskov, Deputy Minister of Infrastructure, told foreign diplomats that "Ukraine exported two million tons of goods in October and 280,000 in September via the alternative route." He added that "the maximum volume of goods exported through the corridor that the UN helped to open reached 4.2 million tons in October 2022." He noted that "241 ships have exported 8.6 million tons of goods, including six million tons of agricultural products, since the alternative corridor began operations in August."