NNA - Ukrainian Ambassador to Lebanon Ihor Ostash held on Wednesday a press conference at the Baabda-based Embassy of Ukraine, in which he presented a slideshow giving the lowdown on the Tripoli-docked ship Laodicea.
"This is a cargo manifest that denotes that the loading port of the ship Laodicea is the port of Kavkaz," said the Ambassador in comments on the first two slides.
"However, the port of Kavkaz being a very shallow port, can receive vessels with a draft of no more than 5 m and a total carrying capacity of 9331 tons. The vessel Laodicea has a draft of 8 m and a carrying capacity of 12,744 tons," he continued as showing more slides.
"The following photos show how the ship Laodicea was loaded in the port of Feodosia. Starting from empty and ending with a full load," he went to explain while exhibiting four more slides.
"Slide 9 shows the port on 07/21/2022 after the departure of the Laodicea ship from Feodosia," he continued.
"Slide 10 shows the embassy received satellite images from a total of 4 countries, and this is indisputable evidence that the ship Laodicea was in the port of Feodosia in the period from July 9th inclusive to July 20th," he said.
"The following documents are the presumable 'official documents' filled by the Russian occupation authorities, which testify to the export of grain from the occupied territories," he added, showing two more slides.
"This is a bag from the ship Laodicea, on which is written that it was ground at the mill in Krasnogvardiysk (Crimea)," he went on showing.
"These two slides show the convoy of stolen grain from Berdyansk to Krasnogvardiysk," he continued.
"Slide 16 shows a photo of a truck loaded with flour near the port of Feodosia," explained the Ambassador. adding that "slide 17 shows that the representative of the Turkish company Loyal Agro says that this shipment was originally headed to Syria, but considering that the price of flour in Lebanon at 650 US dollars is higher than the price in Syria at $600 US. Therefore, the ship Laodicea docked in Tripoli to sell some of the flour in its cargo bay."
"However," he said, "the Russian embassy provided to journalists two phytosanitary certificates on which there is no destination other than Syria. These two falsified documents were issued to Lebanese ports. The flour was destined for the port of Tripoli (Lebanon) and the cargo of barley was destined for Beirut (Lebanon). It is worthy of note that the recipient in the document is Bashir Al Karnazi. The search for him by Lebanese journalists in Beirut returned unsuccessful, because this individual is a Syrian national and does not reside in Lebanon."
Showing the last slide, he said: "Considering the food crisis Lebanon is experiencing, and after negotiations with the association of owners of the stolen grain in Ukraine, we offered to sell flour in Lebanon at the price of 350 dollars per ton (while the market price is USD 650) and to sell the barley for USD 180 per ton (while the market price is USD 450 per tons)."
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