'Relief for the world'

The first shipment of Ukrainian grain since Russia invaded in February left the port of Odessa yesterday under a landmark deal to lift Moscow's naval blockade in the Black Sea.

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres, who brokered the plan with Turkey, welcomed the announcement while Kyiv said it would bring "relief for the world" if Moscow held up its side of the accord.

The five-month halt of deliveries from war-torn Ukraine - one of the world's biggest grain exporters - has contributed to soaring food prices, hitting the world's poorest nations especially hard. Officials said the Razoni cargo ship was making its way through a specially cleared corridor in the mine-infested waters of the Black Sea with 26,000 tonnes of maize.

The breakthrough pact was signed last month, but Russian strikes on the Odessa port the day after sparked outrage from Ukraine's allies and cast doubt over the accord.

Guterres, according to a UN statement, "hopes that this will be the first of many commercial ships moving in accordance with the initiative signed, and that this will bring much-needed stability and relief to global food security, especially in the most fragile humanitarian contexts."

The Kremlin hailed it as a "very positive" development and a "good opportunity to test the effectiveness of the mechanisms that were agreed."

However, this is just the beginning of a backlog and Ukraine Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said 16 more ships were already "waiting for their turn" to leave Odessa. "These are the ships that were blocked from the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion," he said, adding that new requests for ships to dock and load were coming continuously.