Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte
The Ukrainian government asks Israel to detain a ship believed to be transporting stolen grain. It’s “Twitter diplomacy”.
At issue is the ship Panormitis, with Panamanian flag. According to the Government of Ukraine, had more than 25 thousand tons of wheat e stolen barley.
It reached waters close to Israel (Haifa) last Saturday. Ukraine asked Israel to detention of this cargo ship – this after Israeli authorities allowed another ship, with similar cargo, to unload at the port of Haifa; something that created tension between Israel and Ukraine.
And meanwhile the “diplomatic scandal” took on new contours this Wednesday. Because of a , former Twitter.
Andrii Sybiha, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister, went on X to announce that Kiev has officially addressed Israel through the diplomatic and legal channelsto make this request regarding the detention of Panormitis.
This is because the ship is “suspected of transporting a cargo of cereals that was illegally transported from a closed port in the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine, in violation of international law and Ukrainian legislation”.
Less than 10 minutes later, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar responded to Sybiha’s X post: “This is Twitter diplomacy. One would expect a legal request to be made before making a tweet“. Kiev “chose differently” for its “own reasons”, alleges the member of the Israeli Government.
The minister added that the official request from the Government of Ukraine had arrived “late”, the night before, Tuesday. “The request is now being analyzed by the competent authorities.”
But a diplomatic source reacted: “If Israel had responded to other requests through diplomatic channels, there would have been no need to tweets.” “As none of this produced results, we decided to go public,” commented the source.
The same channel adds that Ukraine has, for at least a month and a half, been asking Israel not to buy cereals stolen by Russia.
