Turkeyu2019s foreign minister said on Saturday that Moscow and Kyiv have both answered Ankarau2019s draft memorandum on civilian shipping in the Black Sea, and that their positions remain u201cdifficult to reconcile.u201d Hakan Fidan told NTV that grain extraction is the first priority because u201ccountries around the world need itu201d and because both Russia and Ukraine sell it, but that u201cthere are difficulties to overcome.u201d The interview, reported by AFP on 20 September, is the first public readout that the text circulated earlier in the week has drawn replies rather than silence. It is not a corridor. Operators should treat it as a diplomatic file running in parallel with listed-area war risk, drone attacks on merchant hulls, and a harvest-season push to get wheat out by any remaining route.<\/p>\n
A Turkish diplomat had told AFP on Thursday that Ankara had u201cshared a text of a memorandum, a draft text, with the Russians and the Ukrainians to come up with a solution to those strikes taking place in the Black Sea.u201d The diplomat said the offer was inspired by the 2022 Black Sea Grain Initiative that Turkey and the United Nations brokered and that Russia left in July 2023. Ukraineu2019s later u201csolidarityu201d routing along the Romanian and Bulgarian coasts still contains a four-to-five-nautical-mile stretch where a ship must leave territorial waters and cross international waters. u201cThis is the risky part,u201d the diplomat said. Ankarau2019s draft is built around that gap. A second option would run along the eastern and southern shores, using Turkish and, if Tbilisi agrees, Georgian territorial waters so that commercial ships spend less time in the open basin.<\/p>\n
The operational backdrop is why the draft exists. Industry figures cited with the Thursday leak said at least 25 Turkish-owned ships have been hit since late June, four of them Turkish-flagged. Fidan called in August for a moratorium on attacks on civilian ships; no mechanism followed. Ukraine offered a ceasefire limited to commercial shipping in August; Moscow rejected it and said it wanted a broader deal. Russian officials have continued to describe some merchant ships as carrying weapons for Ukraine. Ukrainian drones have kept hitting Russian tankers and port infrastructure. In the past ten days alone, a Tanzanian-flagged inbound ship lost its captain to a drone strike on 17 September, Russia claimed Geran hits on an unnamed Odesa-bound dry-cargo ship and a tanker-type hull at Chornomorsk on 19 September, and earlier September attacks included the Turkish feeder Lionfish<\/em> and the Russian products tanker Armada Leader<\/em> near Sochi.<\/p>\n President Recep Tayyip Erdou011fan has already put the issue in front of Vladimir Putin. Hellenic Shipping News, carrying an RFI report dated 21 September, said Erdou011fan raised safe passage on the sidelines of a gathering of regional leaders in Kyrgyzstan, and that he still intends a fuller discussion in November. International relations professor Hu00fcseyin Bau011fcu0131 of Middle East Technical University warned that good Turkish relations with both capitals are not a substitute for the two parties sitting down: u201cTurkey cannot solve this problem alone.u201d Grain broker Can Atbau015fou011flu said prices have already risen by as much as 30 percent as both exporters scramble for Baltic, Danube and Romanian outlets, and that the slower pace u201cwill definitely stay bullish.u201d Idle Turkish tonnage is paying the cash cost of that stall. RFI reported owners facing up to u20ac50,000 a month in mooring and crew while ships wait in Istanbul yards; one superintendent said a ship had spent 50 days under repair after the company refused to take Black Sea cargo on the way in. Ziya u00dcstel, CEO of VI-ZA STAR, said high freight is on offer and still not enough: u201cThe main thing is to find out a real solution. Otherwise, no one will try anything anymore.u201d<\/p>\n Underwriters have not waited for Fidanu2019s replies. The Joint War Committeeu2019s JWLA-035 circular, dated 16 September and published by the International Underwriting Association on 17 September, expanded Europe listed area item 2 to the Black Sea excluding territorial waters of adjoining countries other than Russia and Ukraine. Adjacent territorial waters of Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria and Georgia still do not, on that wording, trigger the same notification. The Sea of Azov remains a separate listed item. Inland Ukraine, including Crimea, the River Don to 41u00b0E, the Donets to the border, and Belarus south of 52u00b030u2032N, stay in the listed map. JWC listing is a contract-negotiation trigger. It does not close the basin and it does not create the safe lane Ankara is trying to write down. Premiums already running to hundreds of thousands of dollars for a seven-day Black Sea voyage are the price of transiting without that lane.<\/p>\n Grain is the political cargo, not a general amnesty. Fidanu2019s Saturday remarks put u201cextraction of grainu201d first. They did not promise cover for tankers, containers or project cargo, and they did not say either side had accepted the four-to-five-mile fix or the Georgiau2013Turkey coastal alternative. Russiau2019s harvest is also moving through Baltic ports, including EU ports in Latvia and Lithuania, according to Atbau015fou011flu. Ukraine is pushing volume through Romania and the Danube. FAOu2019s food-price reading for August was already the highest since November 2022; Russian wheat exports in August were reported sharply lower year-on-year. A memorandum that only de-risks a coastal grain track would still leave most commercial risk where it is. A memorandum that never leaves draft form would leave owners exactly where u00dcstel described them: high freight, no hulls willing to earn it.<\/p>\n Until both parties sign, the Black Sea remains a live-fire basin with a diplomatic calendar attached. Masters should not alter TSS, AIS or citadel posture on the basis of Fidan receiving replies. Replies are the start of a negotiation he has already called hard to reconcile. The four-to-five-nautical-mile international-water gap on the western solidarity route is still the section where ships are most exposed, which is why Ankara wrote the draft around it. Coastal routing through Turkish or Georgian territorial waters would only help if those states actually host the traffic and if attackers honour the line u2014 neither of which is in force today.<\/p>\n Ownership is now a targeting variable as well as flag. Twenty-five Turkish-owned hulls in three months is a pattern, not an anecdote, and four of those ships were Turkish-flagged. Charterers who have been hiding beneficial ownership behind open registries should assume that AIS history, manager and commercial operator are visible to both militaries. War-risk warranties written against JWLA-035 will still distinguish Russian and Ukrainian territorial waters from Turkish, Romanian, Bulgarian and Georgian belts; a coastal memorandum, if it ever appears, would have to be read against that map rather than instead of it.<\/p>\n Port and repair congestion in the Sea of Marmara is an operational consequence, not colour. Ships that will not enter the basin are occupying yards, burning cash and delaying drydock slots for unrelated tonnage. Crew-change and stores at Turkish ports remain available; employment inside the listed area does not. Grain charterers looking at November as an Erdou011fanu2013Putin waypoint should not bid laycans on that meeting. Harvest windows close faster than summit calendars.<\/p>\n Regulas Shipping will keep monitoring Turkeyu2019s Black Sea memorandum talks against incident reports and Joint War Committee listed-area language, and will update operators if a signed routing arrangement, or a formal collapse of the draft, changes the voyage picture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Russia and Ukraine have answered Ankara’s draft memorandum on civilian Black Sea shipping, but their positions remain difficult to reconcile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":761,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpai_generated_summary":"","wpai_meta_description":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26,18,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-highlights","category-maritime-industry","category-maritime-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regulasshipping.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regulasshipping.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regulasshipping.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regulasshipping.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regulasshipping.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=762"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/regulasshipping.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":763,"href":"https:\/\/regulasshipping.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762\/revisions\/763"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regulasshipping.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regulasshipping.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regulasshipping.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regulasshipping.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Operational implications<\/h2>\n
What Operators Should Note<\/h2>\n
\n