Nato and Ukraine are to discuss security in the Black Sea next week, particularly the operation of a corridor for grain exports, at the request of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Western alliance said on Saturday.
Nato spokesperson Oanu Lungescu said the Nato-Ukraine Council, set up at this month's alliance summit, would discuss the situation following Russia's withdrawal from the year-old deal overseeing grain exports from Ukrainian ports.
Mr Zelenskyy said he had requested the meeting in a telephone conversation with Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.
Ms Lungescu said the two men discussed Russia's pullout from the deal and its "continued attempts to weaponise food, which are affecting millions of vulnerable people around the world".
The meeting, she said, would take place at the level of ambassadors. The council's inaugural meeting, at Nato's summit in Vilnius, was attended by heads of state or government.
Mr Zelenskyy, in his nightly video address, had said earlier that the council brought cooperation with Nato "to a new, more advanced level, the Nato-Ukraine Council, and this mechanism can have an impact.
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As the war in Ukraine approaches the 500-day mark, 'The National' looks back at the conflict. All photos: AP -
Ukrainian soldiers cover their ears to protect from Russian tank shelling in a shelter on the front line in the Zaporizhzhia region in July -
A cemetery in evening sunlight near Lviv in July -
Flooded streets in Kherson in June after the walls of the Kakhovka dam collapsed -
Tetiana with her pets, Tsatsa and Chunya, in her house that was flooded when the Kakhovka dam in Kherson was breached -
Young cadets sing the national anthem during a graduation ceremony at a cadet lyceum in Kyiv in June -
Bakhmut in April, the site of the heaviest battles in the Donetsk region -
A message on a mirror reads 'Ukraine will prevail' in a badly damaged school in Kharkiv in February -
Ukrainian servicemen in position close to the border with Belarus in February -
Hospital staff in Kherson with orphaned children at the regional hospital maternity ward in November 2022 -
A sniper unit aims at Russian positions in the Kherson region during an operation in November 2022 -
Ukrainian artillerymen fire at Russian positions near Bakhmut in November 2022 -
A Ukrainian serviceman near Oskil village in October 2022 -
Funeral workers carry the coffin of an unidentified civilian who died in the Bucha community during the Russian occupation period in February-March 2022 -
Cadets practise with gas masks in a bomb shelter on the first day of school at a cadet lyceum in Kyiv, Ukraine, in September -
A young girl with her dog waves goodbye to her grandparents from an evacuation train leaving Pokrovsk in August 2022 -
A child looks up at a building destroyed during attacks in Irpin in May 2022 -
An elderly patient boards a medical evacuation train in Pokrovsk in May 2022 -
Nila Zelinska holds a doll belonging to her granddaughter that she found in her destroyed house in Potashnya, on the outskirts of Kyiv, in May 2022 -
Residents shelter in the city subway of Kharkiv in May 2022 -
Destroyed Russian tanks in Bucha, April 2022 -
A family fleeing the village of Ruska Lozova in April 2022 arrive in their shrapnel-riddled car at a screening point in Kharkiv -
Smoke fills the air after shelling in Odesa in April -
Yehor, 7, with a wooden toy rifle next to destroyed Russian military vehicles near Chernihiv in April 2022 -
Security Service of Ukraine servicemen enter a building during an operation to arrest suspected Russian collaborators in Kharkiv in April 2022 -
A Ukrainian soldier during a pick-up game of football in Irpin in April 2022 -
The partially abandoned town of Chernobyl in April 2022 -
Ruslan Mishanin, 36, bids farewell to his nine-year-old daughter as the train with his family leaves Odesa for Poland in April -
Halyna Falko, 52, talks to reporters in March 2022 while looking at the destruction caused to her house near Brovary after a Russian attack -
Anti-tank barricades on a street in preparation for a possible Russian offensive in Odesa in March 2022 -
A man recovering items from a burning shop after a Russian attack in Kharkiv in March 2022 -
Ukrainians under a destroyed bridge as they as they cross the Irpin river on the outskirts of Kyiv in March 2022
"I proposed to Jens that the council be convened without delay for relevant crisis consultations. The meeting will take place in the coming days. We can overcome the security crisis in the Black Sea."
Russia said it had withdrawn from the accord on grounds that Western countries had ignored its demands to ensure Moscow's food and fertiliser exports. Moscow said ships heading to Ukraine's Black Sea ports could be considered military targets.
The United Nations' aid chief told the UN Security Council on Friday that a spike in grain prices since Russia quit the deal "potentially threatens hunger and worse for millions of people."
