Ukraine is rebuilding river ports on the Danube to export grain
He writes about it Guardian.
Before the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation, the ports on the Danube were not used enough, and some of them completely fell into disrepair. Alla Stoyanova, head of the department of agrarian policy of the Odesa region, cites the example of the Rhenia port, which was one of the designated ports in the region during the Soviet Union, but recently it has not been used at all.
According to her, more than 160 vessels are waiting in the Black Sea to enter the Sulyn Canal, but its capacity per day will remain only 5-6 vessels.
At the beginning of the Russian invasion, silos and ports in Odesa were storing more than 25 million tons of grain. Today, 5 million of them are exported via alternative road, rail and river routes.
“In March, we should export 200,000 tons. In April, 1.6 million; in May, 1,743,000 tons; and in June, more than 2.5 million tons. But this capacity is still not enough, because usually with our six we exported 5-6 million tons of grain every month through ports in the Odesa region,” said Stoyanova.
According to her, one truck can transport only 25 tons, and a train car – 60 tons. It takes 2,000 loaders to load the equivalent of one grain truck.
“All those long lines of trucks and trains that you can see at the border because the neighboring countries are not able to handle so much grain from us,” she added.
The publication notes that according to Ukraine’s plan to expand its river ports with at least two new silos and special parking lots for trucks in order to load grain trucks faster, these are only emergency measures for the shipment of grain. Ukrainian officials realize that the opening of the Black Sea Route is the only way to overcome global hunger.
“The truth is that there are no alternatives to the seaports. We have to unblock them again. The world can find a way to get Russia to agree to this. If, unfortunately, we are losing soldiers every day who bravely defend our country, there are other statistics such as every 48 seconds, one person in the world dies of hunger,” said the head of the Department of Agrarian Policy.
According to the UN, the number of hungry people in the world has increased by 150 million since the start of the Covid pandemic. They warn that the food crisis caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine risks pushing some countries to mass starvation.
- European railways want to help Ukraine with the export of grain.
Follow the events in Ukraine and the world together with Espresso! Subscribe to the Telegram channel: https://t.me/espresotb