UN chief to focus on grain deal, nuclear safety during Ukraine visit

New Delhi : United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres will be in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on Thursday to attend a trilateral meeting with Volodymyr Zelinskyy and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a development which will be followed closely by neighbouring Russia.
Guterres’ visit to the war-torn country comes a little over two weeks after the first cargo ship left the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odesa carrying grain under the Black Sea Grain Initiative.
Stephane Dujarric, the spokesman for the UN Secretary-General, said in New York last night that Guterres is going to Ukraine at the invitation of Zelinskyy.
From Lviv, he will be travelling to Odesa on Friday which is one of the three key Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea – including Chernomorsk and Yuzhny – for exporting grain under the initiative signed by Ukraine, Russia and Turkey in Istanbul on July 22.
On Saturday, Guterres will meet the senior representatives from Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and United Nations at the Joint Coordination Centre (JCC) set up in Istanbul for safe transportation by merchant ships of grain and other foodstuffs and fertilisers from the Ukrainian ports.
The announcment of UN chief’s visit came as the first maritime shipment of Ukrainian wheat for humanitarian operations run by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) left Ukraine on Tuesday.