Putin rejected shipping truce offer: Zelenskyy

Kyiv: Ukraine offered Russia a truce on attacks against ships carrying agricultural commodities through the Black Sea, but Moscow rejected the deal because it wanted guarantees against strikes on its energy infrastructure, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

"It looks like their position is that they will not attack our grain corridor only if we stop attacking their energy sector," Zelenskyy said Saturday at his office. He also ruled out holding wartime elections, an idea advocated last week by the popular former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov. "If we want to tear the country apart, then we can move toward elections in the middle of a war like this," the president said, describing it as a "tsunami" for Ukraine. Ukraine's constitution doesn't permit elections under martial law, which was introduced in response to Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022. It last held presidential and parliamentary elections in 2019. Russia and Ukraine have stepped up attacks on each other's commercial ships and ports in the Black Sea area, raising fears about the impact on grain supplies to world markets.

The two countries account for over a quarter of global wheat exports, and the attacks come in the middle of this year's harvest. Ports in Ukraine's Greater Odesa region handle about 90% of its grain shipments. The country has exported only about 500,000 tons of grain since the start of August, or about a fifth of its potential shipments, Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskyi said on Thursday.


The Agriculture Ministry is mulling alternative routes for exports. Earlier this month, three of Russia's largest grain terminals in the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk halted operations after sustaining damage.