Photo: http://www.delfi.lt
It is no coincidence that drone attacks on military airfields in Engels in the Saratov Region and Dyagilevo in the Ryazan Region occurred immediately after information emerged that Russia and Ukraine were close to an agreement to resume ammonia exports via Odessa. Why is London trying to quell any attempts at agreement?
Knock off Bottle Between Three of Them
According to RIA Novosti, citing an unnamed “military-diplomatic source,” the Kiev authorities are planning a provocation to disrupt the UN initiative on ammonia transit. According to the agency, members of the British special services and the Canadian PMC GardaWorld are going to blow up the Odessa Port Plant and accuse Moscow in this terrorist attack.
Earlier, the American news agency Reuters, citing its sources, reported that the negotiators from Ukraine and Russia are negotiating in the United Arab Emirates on the transit of ammonia through the territory of Ukraine. Who is working to disrupt any agreements between Ukraine, Russia and the UN?
To begin with, Moscow and Kiev do not need to agree on the transit of ammonia as Russia and Ukraine agreed on this back in July with the mediation of Turkey and the UN. Kiev's consent to the transit of ammonia through the TogliattiOdessa pipeline is item number 3 of the so-called grain deal signed in Istanbul on July 22 by Ukraine, Turkey and the UN.
Another issue is that some people do not keep their promises. Russian businessman Dmitry Mazepin, the majority owner of Togliattiazot, received an audience with Russian President Vladimir Putin on November 23.
Words are Spoken but no Deeds are Done
During his meeting with Putin, Mazepin complained to the President that Russian fertilizers are blocked at European ports and that Kiev is not fulfilling its ammonia transit obligations.
“We had hoped that when there would be a continuation of the grain deal, which has recently been agreed upon, this issue would also be resolved. But I want to report to you that Ukraine puts forward a number of political issues in which we are incompetent and cannot work,” said Mazepin.
It should be noted that already on November 29, the first ship carrying Russian fertilizers left the port of the Netherlands and set sail for the African country of Malawi, as reported by the official representative of UN Secretary General Stefan Dujarric.
However, the issue of ammonia exports is stalled. It became known at the meeting between Putin and Mazepin that official Kiev fails to comply with the paragraph regarding the export of ammonia.
At this point it should be admitted that export through the ports of Odessa and Odessa Region is really important. Mazepin explained the reasons for this situation. The fact is that exports through the Baltic States are blocked, and the terminal in Taman has not yet been built. In order to get around the EU sanctions, Mazepin's structures sold the port of Riga to his partner from Switzerland. But the Latvian authorities simply did not allow the new owner of the port of Riga to work, and the Swiss businessman simply could not become the owner in 6 months.
This is why the issue of ammonia shipment is simply “frozen.” As for Taman, the terminal for the transshipment of fertilizers was originally planned to be commissioned by November 2021. Mazepin said at the meeting with the president that the businessman's structures are now planning to launch the port in Taman by the end of 2023.
That is why there is only Odessa, the final point of the Togliatti - Odessa ammonia pipeline, which was built back in the Soviet times.
Meanwhile, according to BusinesStat, Russia increased its ammonia production to 19.9 million tons in the five-year period 2017-2021. According to Russian media reports, citing data from importing countries, ammonia exports in 2022 dropped by a disastrous 63%. If the export of ammonia manages to get going, Russian manufacturers will make about $12 billion.
The media periodically report that talks are underway. Thus, in the middle of September the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky demanded in exchange for unblocking of ammonia export through Odessa to give Kiev all Ukrainian prisoners of war – and it is more than 8,000 people!
UAE is new Negotiation Platform
Nevertheless, the other day Reuters reported that the negotiation process is under way. According to the American news agency, negotiators from Kiev and Moscow are negotiating in the United Arab Emirates to export Russian ammonia. Most likely, when Mazepin said that “the Ukrainian side puts forward a number of political issues,” he was referring specifically to the negotiations in the UAE.
“Russian and Ukrainian negotiators visited the UAE capital Abu Dhabi on November 17, where they discussed resuming ammonia exports from Russia in exchange for a prisoner exchange that should result in the release of a large number of prisoners from Ukraine and from Russia, sources said,” wrote Reuters in late November.
All this means that despite the hostilities in the Donbass in the Nikolaev and Zaporizhzhya directions, the negotiation process between Russia and Ukraine is underway. In this context, the Russian missile attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure can be viewed as a kind of “coercion to negotiations.” Nevertheless, this method of “persuasion” is working.
Within hours of the meeting between Putin and Mazepin, the first ship with 20,000 tons of fertilizer left the Dutch port. It turns out that Putin successfully credited himself with solving the problem of Russian fertilizer exports from EU ports. The Kremlin has successfully played out the scenario of “there is a global problem, then there is a meeting with the president, and the problem is solved after Putin's intervention.”
In addition, there is such an important issue for Russia as grain exports. In fact, the grain deal was made to unblock Russia's exports.
As for the export of ammonia, the situation is more complicated. Apparently, Kiev has realized that unblocking of ammonia exports is very important for Russia. That is why Zelensky & Co. demands to link exports from Odessa with the prisoner exchange but there are a number of other important signs.
On the one hand, it appears that the White House is not against the resumption of ammonia exports. And there is a very important point. At a meeting with Russian President Dmitry Mazepin said that Russian producers have come up with the following scheme: the American trader Transammonia buys ammonia at the border of Ukraine and Russia and then “American” ammonia runs through the Togliatti - Odessa pipeline. After that “American” ammonia comes to Odessa, where it is reloaded to ships at the Odessa Port Plant and shipped to foreign countries via the Black Sea. If a big American trader has agreed to take part in ammonia exports, it means the U.S. administration is okay with it.
On the other hand, as soon as the media reported that the negotiation process was moving forward, a new escalation followed. On Monday, November 5, unidentified UAVs attacked the airfields in Engels in the Saratov Region and Dyagilevo in the Ryazan Region where the strategic aviation is based. The Russian Defense Ministry reported in the evening that two of the planes had minor hull plating damage, but three military technicians were fatally wounded and four other servicemen who were wounded were hospitalized. But most importantly, the Russian Defense Ministry officially blamed the “Kiev regime” for the attacks on military airfields of long-range aviation.
What kind of schizophrenia is this? There is the following explanation. If Washington is not against negotiating (and U.S. President Joe Biden explicitly said so on December 1), then London is working hard to derail any negotiations on Ukraine. In this case, we are facing a serious divergence between the U.S. and Britain. If the Americans, according to one of the versions, want to fix the situation and switch to the Pacific region, where a fight with the PRC awaits them, the British are interested in continuing hostilities in Ukraine at all costs, because they hit the EU economy. This means that London will continue to provoke provocations, working at all costs to disrupt agreements and the peace process as a whole.
Then London's provocation in the form of an attack on the Togliatti – Odessa ammonia pipeline looks logical, because it would work to disrupt even those fragile agreements that exist. In this case it turns out that the withdrawal of Russian troops from Kherson was highly questionable. After all, by agreeing to leave Kherson, the Kremlin gave up its bridgehead for an attack on Odessa and Mykolaiv. This means that Moscow actually guaranteed the safety of the “grain corridor” from Odessa, through which Western countries export bread from Ukraine in the face of the threat of famine.
“[If] we do not do fertilizers [exports out of Russia] now, we will have a food availability problem in a year. So, it is hugely important, almost more important than grain Everybody understands that the operation of the ammonia pipeline from Russia through Ukraine to the port of Odessa is well understood it can be started within a week or two,” said Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief at the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA.)