Ship Stuck Since February 2022 Departs Ukraine on Safety Corridor

Sept 15 (Reuters) – A bulk carrier has left Ukraine’s Odesa port, deputy prime minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said on Friday – the fifth to sail since Russia withdrew from a safe-passage deal for grain ships.

Kubrakov said the Puma carrier, which entered the port on Feb. 19, 2022 and had been unable to depart since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine days later, left Odesa with 14,000 tonnes of rapeseed and 16,000 tonnes of metal. 

Lawmaker Oleksiy Honcharenko posted photographs of the vessel on its way, saying it had entered the Black Sea, though Reuters could not immediately verify the date or location.

The Puma is the fifth vessel to leave the port of Odesa since Moscow withdrew from the U.N. brokered Black Sea grain export deal in July and threatened to treat all vessels as potential military targets.

In response, Ukraine announced a “humanitarian corridor” hugging the western Black Sea coast near Romania and Bulgaria.

Four vessels stuck in Ukrainian ports during the invasion have thus far been able to use the corridor to leave.

(Reporting by Anna Pruchnicka; additional reporting by Max Hunder and Yuliia Dysa, editing by Mark Heinrich and Grant McCool)

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