Vessels in the Bosphorus have been waiting for inspection by the RCC for more than a month, — Vaskov

There are currently 99 vessels awaiting inspection by the Joint Coordination Center (JCC) in the Bosphorus. Some of them have been waiting in Turkish waters for more than a month.

There are 99 vessels in the Bosphorus, of which 72 are heading to Ukrainian ports, and 27 are waiting for continued voyages loaded with products. Some of them are forced to stay in Turkish waters for more than a month.

“This is the result of purposeful actions of the delegation of the Russian Federation in the SCC, the purpose of which is to slow down the process of ship inspections. At first, they reduced the number of inspection groups to 3, now they began to prolong the time of the inspections themselves,” said Deputy Minister for Communities, Territories and Infrastructure Development Yuriy Vaskov.

According to him, representatives of the Russian Federation began to check even indicators that are not provided for in the documents of the SCC and have nothing to do with the subject of the inspection (for example, whether the ship’s units work well, the amount of fuel on the ship, etc.).

“With such an algorithm, the inspection of one vessel takes from 4 hours. This is unproductive and contributes to the increase of the queue. An increase in the queue means a decrease in the volume of export of agricultural products from our ports and millions of losses for cargo owners due to downtime,” the deputy minister added.

As of December 25, due to sabotage by representatives of the Russian Federation, inspection group 3 did not carry out any inspection. As a result, only 6 inspections out of 10 planned took place per day, and at least 12 inspections per day are necessary for the stable operation of the “grain corridor”.