Romania Is About to Double Ukrainian Grain Transit via Its Territory

Romania will increase its transit capacity for Ukrainian grain from 2 to 4 million tons per month. This was announced by Romanian Transport and Infrastructure Minister Sorin Grindeanu, Agerpres reports. The Romanian minister made the corresponding statement after negotiations with representatives of the USA, the European Union, Moldova, Ukraine and Romania on alternative routes for transporting grain from Ukraine. “We agreed that Ukrainian grain exports should be accelerated in the context of the attacks on the Ukrainian ports in Reni and Izmail that had taken place during the last weeks. During these meetings, we emphasized the importance of Romanian land, rail and sea transport routes to maintain a continuous flow of exports and imports from Ukraine,” Grindeanu said. He added that in terms of transport on the Danube, the Sulina Canal is the only viable waterway for these shipments, so it is important to optimize the capacity of this route. “It was an extremely good and fruitful meeting, which will allow us, thanks to the measures we will take, to increase the capacity of grain transit from Ukraine through Romania. So that we can reach almost 4 million tons per month, from the 2 million tons we have now,” Grindeanu outlined. As it is known, on 17 July Russian announced the cancellation of the grain deal and threatened “risks” to the parties that continue the initiative without Russia’s participation. In addition, Moscow started massive shelling of Odessa’s port infrastructure and Danube ports. Earlier, Romanian Foreign Minister Luminita Odobescu claimed that her country works on finding new ways to transport Ukrainian grain. See also the EP blog on whether the grain deal has a future after Russia’s withdrawal. Read an article by top EU diplomat Josep Borrell on how to force Russia to return to the grain deal.