Russia Agrees to Renew Ukraine Grain Deal

In the end, Moscow committed to honoring the existing deal for another four months, without any of the big changes it had asked for. That included better international access for its agriculture exports and a request by Russian officials to restart ammonia exports through a Ukrainian pipeline.  

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said that resolving issues around its agricultural-related exports would be a condition for renewing the deal in four months’ time. Western countries haven’t sanctioned those exports, but sanctions might have created obstacles to financing and shipping Russian agricultural products, U.N. officials say.

The U.N. is “fully committed to removing the remaining obstacles to exporting food and fertilizers from the Russian Federation,” said U.N. Secretary-General

António Guterres.

Moscow also warned Ukraine against using the extended deal for military purposes. Russia had previously accused Ukraine of staging attacks on Crimea using the corridor, an allegation Ukraine has denied. “It should also be absolutely clear that any attempts to use the humanitarian corridor in the Black Sea for provocative military purposes will be resolutely suppressed,” the Foreign Ministry said.

The grain agreement, signed by Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the U.N. in July, allowed Ukraine to resume shipping food products through three Black Sea ports, partially lifting a Russian blockade that triggered fears of a deepening global food crisis. The deal has helped Ukraine to resume shipping wheat, corn and other products at nearly prewar levels, bringing global prices down.

Grain prices fell sharply after the U.N. announced an extension of the deal on Thursday morning. Wheat prices dropped 1.7% to $8.04 a bushel and corn prices were down close to 1% to $6.59 a bushel. Ukrainian President

Volodymyr Zelensky

called the extension a “key decision in the global fight against the food crisis.”

Moscow had pushed for Ukraine to allow for the export of Russian ammonia through a pipeline across the country. Ukrainian officials have been reluctant, citing safety concerns about storing the material at the pipeline’s terminus in Odessa, as well as political sensitivity within Ukraine.

The grain agreement is the largest diplomatic breakthrough of the entire war, and preserving it has been a priority for Mr. Guterres and for Turkey’s President Recep

Tayyip Erdogan,

who helped broker the negotiations. Thursday’s extension followed weeks of diplomacy including during the Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, and among diplomats meeting in Istanbul and Geneva.

Russia briefly suspended its role in the grain agreement in late October, threatening to bring the maritime corridor to a halt. Moscow rejoined the deal days later following negotiations with the U.N. and Turkey.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had threatened to abandon the grain agreement in recent months, arguing that not enough of the grain was being shipped to poor countries. U.N. data showed that as of September some 28% of grain shipped under the initiative went to lower-income nations, including humanitarian shipments to Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Somalia.

U.S. and European leaders pressed Russian officials to renew the deal during the G-20 this week.

“Russia heard and apparently felt that the world would not accept Moscow refusing to extend the agreement,” Secretary of State

Antony Blinken

told reporters in Bangkok. 

A looming deadline on Nov. 19 for the deal’s renewal had weighed on Ukraine’s vast farming community. The deal has effectively reopened their key export route. Before the war, farmers shipped over 95% of their products through the Black Sea.

“For the likes of my company, it is critical,” said Oleh Bakhmatyuk, the chairman of UkrLandFarming, one of Ukraine’s biggest farming groups. “If farmers can’t sell, they can’t plant and sow again, so there is a knock on effect.”

Some farmers had hoped that a new deal would go further than the previous one. Ukraine had at one stage pushed to broaden the deal to include the ports of Mykolaiv, which are among the largest in Ukraine. Mykolaiv ports had shipped 35% of the country’s food exports before the war, according to grain trader Nibulon Ltd.

“Without access to these ports, exporters have to use alternative routes by road and river that are much slower and, in some cases, 10 to 40 times more expensive,” said Andriy Vadaturskyy, chief executive of Mykolaiv-based Nibulon.

Ukraine has shipped more than 11 million tons of wheat, corn, sunflower oil and other goods from three ports located in the Odessa region since exports resumed in August, U.N. data shows. Ukrainian officials had pushed to expand the agreement to include additional ports and products in recent months, but set aside those demands to focus on a renewal of the existing deal, diplomats said.

Still unresolved is the problem of a backlog of ships waiting to enter and exit the Black Sea corridor. The U.N. said on Wednesday evening that 67 vessels are waiting to move, following inspection, toward Ukraine. Those vessels have the capacity to export about 1.5 million tons of grain and other products. Another 16 loaded vessels are waiting to leave the Black Sea following inspection in Istanbul.

Ukraine has in recent weeks accused Russia of creating the backlog by deliberately slowing the work of the joint inspection teams stationed in Istanbul, limiting the number of ships coming to and from Ukraine. Russia says it is cooperating with the initiative. Teams from all four parties inspect each ship coming to and from Ukraine to provide security and prevent smuggling.

The renewal of the deal includes no changes to the work of the inspection teams, according to Ismini Palla, a spokeswoman for the U.N. at the Joint Coordination Center for the deal in Istanbul.

—Ann M. Simmons and Alistair MacDonald contributed to this article.

Write to William Mauldin at william.mauldin@wsj.com