In a joint letter on Monday, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, Transport and Communications Minister Marius Skuodis, and Agriculture Minister Kęstutis Navickas called on the European Commission to strengthen Ukraine’s alternative grain export route through the Baltic states.
The letter was sent to the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, EC Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis, European Transport Commissioner Adina Valean and European Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski. It states that Russia's decision to withdraw from the Black Sea Grain Initiative and to bomb the Ukrainian port of Odesa “may profoundly impact the already delicate food security situation in the affected countries”.
The ministers underlined that the transport route between Ukraine and the Baltic states may serve “as a viable and trusted alternative route” for the shipment of Ukrainian grain. Improving the corridor infrastructure and facilitating the handling of freight between the different rail gauges would help increase transport capacity, they added.
“The infrastructure of the Baltic states (ports, railways, and road transport) can serve as a viable and trusted alternative route for transit of Ukrainian products, including grain. The railway and road infrastructure, and the five seaports of the Baltic States, in particular (Tallinn, Riga, Ventspils, Liepāja, and Klaipėda), have a combined annual capacity of 25 million tons for grain alone,” the letter reads.
Landsbergis has also tweeted that since the NATO summit in Vilnius, Russian President Vladimir Putin “feels emboldened to escalate, pulling out of the grain deal, attacking Odessa and now a Danube port”.
“We must make sure our determination to help Ukraine to victory and NATO membership is better understood. Time to double down on our efforts,” he said.
Lithuania has proposed ways to quickly increase the volume of grain transported from Ukraine to the Baltic Sea, but negotiations with the European Commission and Poland are not going smoothly, Lithuanian Transport and Communications Minister Marius Skuodis said earlier.
To speed up the shipment of Ukrainian grain, Lithuania is proposing to move customs and sanitary checks from the Ukrainian-Polish border to the Lithuanian port of Klaipėda, and Vilnius has also proposed ways to improve the tracking of cargo on Polish territory, he said.
In April, the minister said that lines on the Ukrainian-Polish border were hampering the smooth shipment of Ukrainian grain by rail to Lithuania via Poland.
As Russia terminated the existing agreement on the exports of Ukrainian grain by sea last week, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda said in Brussels last week that alternative grain export routes would be looked for in the Baltic Sea.
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