Source: POLITICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE, 7/5/22

Russia allegedly shipped a boatload of stolen Ukrainian grain aboard the Russian cargo ship, Zhibek Zholy, last week, POLITICO’s Sarah Anne Aarup reports.

Ukraine said the ship, which left from the Russian-occupied port of Berdyansk, was seized upon arriving in Turkey on Sunday.
Moscow had touted the shipment as a reopening of seaports for cargo — namely, the hundreds of millions of tons of grain locked within the war-torn country’s borders — which could help avert a hunger crisis for millions who rely on Ukraine for food imports.

But analysts say the grain aboard the Russian ship is likely stolen from Ukrainian farmers, and that its entry into Turkey could poison a potential Black Sea corridor that the Biden administration and European allies have been laboring to set up.

An already tricky endeavor: As Meredith has reported , the U.S. has been racing to create a corridor by land or sea that will free the grain trapped within Ukraine's borders.

The United Nations has been leading negotiations to reopen Black Sea ports to resume cargo shipments. But the U.S. is skeptical that those talks will reach any sort of conclusion given Moscow’s ask to end Western sanctions.

The U.S. also has been working with allies to patch together an expanded land corridor for Ukrainian grain, but that could still be months away from operation.

Made trickier by the shipment: The arrival of allegedly stolen Ukrainian grain to Turkey, which has offered security guarantees for any corridor created for grain shipments, leaves Ankara and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with a difficult call.

Receiving and re-exporting the grain to countries in need could help stave off a hunger crisis for millions. But it also puts Turkey at risk of being seen as a middle-man peddling the stolen goods of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The outlook: The fate of the seized ship, and the grain aboard it, will be decided by a group of investigators from Turkey. Bloomberg on Monday reported that the investigation had begun.