Schulte ship first to use Ukraine’s “temporary corridor”
Written by Nick Blenkey
Joseph Schulte passed Odesa's Vorontsov Lighthouse this morning as it entered the "temporary corridor"
The first vessel to use the “temporary corridor” from Ukrainian ports announced on August 10, is the 2013-built Hong Kong-flagged containership Joseph Schulte.
Ukraine’s Ministry for Reconstruction announced this morning that the ship which, it said, had been in the port of Odesa since February 23, 22, passed Odesa’s Vorontsov Lighthouse and was headed for the Bosporus. It is carrying more than 30 thousand tons of cargo (2,114 containers), including food products.
The corridor will be primarily used to evacuate ships that were in the Ukrainian ports of Chornomorsk, Odesa and Pivdennyi at the time of the Russian of invasion of Ukraine
The vessel’s AIS data has been tracked by interested observers since it left Odesa and, by this afternoon, had reportedly reached Romanian waters. It remains to be seen whether it will reach its destination without the sort of Russian “inspection” that saw the crew of the Pulau-flagged Sukru Okan forced to their knees at gunpoint.
The fact that the Schulte ship is flying the flag of Hong Kong, China, rather than that of Pulau might give the Russians pause for thought.
Meantime, there are multiple reports that Russia has resumed its targeting of Ukrainian grain infrastructure with drones used in overnight strikes on storage facilities and ports along the Danube River that Ukraine has increasingly used for grain shipments to Europe.
