Grain ship to Ethiopia ready to set sail from Ukraine

The first UN-chartered vessel MV Brave Commander loads more than 23,000 tonnes of grain to export to Ethiopia, in Yuzhne, east of Odessa on the Black Sea coast, on August 14, 2022. - On July 22, 2022 Kyiv and Moscow signed a landmark deal with Turkey to unblock Black Sea grain deliveries, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. UN's World Food Programme has purchased an initial 30,000 tonnes of Ukrainian wheat. MV Brave Commander has a capacity of 23,000 tonnes. (Photo by OLEKSANDR GIMANOV / AFP) (Photo by OLEKSANDR GIMANOV/AFP via Getty Images)

A cargo ship carrying 23,000 metric tons of wheat is ready to set sail from the Ukrainian port of Pivdennyi to Ethiopia, Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov announced Sunday.

The Liberian-flagged Brave Commander cargo ship arrived in Pivdennyi Friday, according to Kubrakov, and will be the first UN-chartered ship to head for an African nation, Reuters reported. It is currently moored at Pivdennyi port, according to ship tracking website Marine Traffic.

“It is the supply of grain, in particular for Ethiopia, where the situation with hunger is particularly severe,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday.
“In less than two weeks, three of our ports — Odesa, Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi — managed to export such a volume, which is equal to the entire agricultural export by road for July and more than two-thirds of the export by rail for the past month.”