“One hand washes the other’: grain deal shines light on Erdoğan’s ties to Putin

Source:Financial Times Date:06Nov2022

Though Putin threatened to withdraw from the deal again if Ukraine violated the “guarantees”, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s administration, told the FT that “the very idea that Ukraine can give security guarantees to the Black Sea fleet of the occupying country — ‘thunderstorms of the seas and oceans’ — seems to me quite ridiculous.” Instead, Kyiv, the UN and Turkey showed “that the grain corridor can continue to work even without the Kremlin’s participation”, Podolyak said, referring to continued shipments this week. “The Kremlin just fell into a trap and didn’t know how to get out,” Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of political consultancy R. Politik, wrote on social media app Telegram. “They suspended the deal, but it wasn’t clear how they could stop grain exports. And they couldn’t, except by force, which wasn’t part of the plan.”