Ukraine continues to supply food to Iran, despite “Shahed” shelling

Iran is one of russia’s loyal allies in the war with Ukraine. At the very least, this country sends kamikaze drones to russian federation, with which it attacks our cities. However, Ukraine continues to supply grain to Iran.

To that extent, on November 30, the bulk carrier Omicron Sky left the port of Chornomorsk through the “grain corridor”. Ukrainian corn was sent to Iran on it, as evidenced by the ship’s track tracker on MarineTraffic and USM data.

Omicron Sky was loaded with corn at the Transservice-2008 terminal in Chornomorsk. The operator is the Black Sea branch of USPA. The charterer and consignee are unknown.

66,600 tons of corn were sent by ship to Iran. On January 7, the bulk carrier arrived at the anchorage near the port of Bender Imam Khomeini in Iran. As of January 12, according to MarineTraffic, the vessel entered the port itself.

Omicron Sky is a bulk carrier under the flag of Liberia, built in 2006. Deadweight — 77,031 tons. The vessel is owned and managed by Iino Marine Service Co., Ltd, based in Tokyo, Japan, according to Baltic Shipping, but this information may be out of date.

All vessels bound for the “grain corridor” are inspected by the Joint Coordination Center in Istanbul. It could be assumed that the recipient of Ukrainian corn is Turkey, which then decided to resell the cargo to Iran. But all the sources indicate that the corn was sent from Chornomorsk to Iran directly, per one voyage, and Iran was indicated as the port of destination from the very beginning.

Open data about the destination of the cargo should “reassure” Ukrainians, convince them that there is nothing suspicious about the voyage At the same time, Iran never appears in the reports of the Ministry of Infrastructure on shipments through the “grain corridor”. Obviously, due to the fact that the entity knows what reaction it will receive from society.

According to Stark Shipping, during the operation of the “grain corridor” Ukraine sent 192,884 tons of products to Iran by sea. All cargo was received by the above-mentioned Bender-Imam-Khomeini port. A year earlier, Ukraine delivered a significantly larger amount of food to Iran by sea — about 2.5 million tons. But in the current conditions, even one ton of grain is too much for an accomplice of a terrorist country.

Back in October 2022, Volodymyr Klymenko, ex-president of the Ukrainian Grain Association and former deputy CEO of the Nibulon company for interaction with authorities, publicly stated that Ukraine should stop supplying grain to Iran.

According to him, in different years he met several times in Ukraine with Iranian ambassadors at their initiative. The topic of conversation is mostly the same — Iran needs Ukrainian grain.

“They asked to find an opportunity to supply grain, sometimes despite the sanctions. Ukraine has always helped the people of Iran in solving food security issues. And now Iranian drones are bombing Ukraine? Is this the gratitude of the leaders of Iran, whom we have always helped with grain?”, Klymenko commented.

We will give only a few examples. At the end of September 2022, the russians purposefully launched more than 10 kamikaze drones over Uman. According to the opinion of the Ukrainian special services, the russians wanted to target religious objects of Hasidic Jews with a large crowd of people (at that time, about 23 thousand Hasids were celebrating Rosh Hashanah in the city).

On October 17, russia attacked a residential building in Kyiv with an Iranian drone. As a result of the attack, five people died, including a pregnant woman. On December 31, on New Year’s Eve, air defense forces destroyed 13 Shahed-131/136 drones, and on January 1 – 32.

According to the head of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Kyryll Budanov, russia has already launched about 540 such drones in Ukraine. And in the summer, the terrorist country ordered another 1,700 kamikaze drones from Iran.In order to stop the export of grain to Iran, the government and the president have to take the appropriate decision. It is difficult to talk about a possible deterioration of relations with Iran, when russia has been attacking Ukraine with Iranian kamikaze drones for several months. At the same time, there is no reason to believe that Iran will stop selling drones to russia if Ukraine stops supplying grain. But on the diplomatic level, this step must be taken, because currently “feeding” Iran with grain in exchange for killing Ukrainians looks cynical and demoralizes the already tired people.