How Were the 33 Million Tons Counted? Reading the Black Sea Grain Corridor's Inspection and Shipment Records

Why It Matters

The figure of more than 33 million tons is the most quoted number from the Black Sea Grain Initiative, but it is a count of cleared outbound cargo, not of food delivered to hungry people. It comes from a documented process: joint inspection in the Istanbul area, voyage-by-voyage registration, and public tables run by the Joint Coordination Centre (JCC). Reading those records correctly shows what the corridor demonstrably achieved and where the numbers stop.

Background

The two instruments signed on 22 July 2022

The arrangement consisted of two separate texts signed in Istanbul on 22 July 2022. The first, the Initiative on the Safe Transportation of Grain and Foodstuffs from Ukrainian Ports, was agreed by Türkiye, Russia, Ukraine and the United Nations. The second was a memorandum of understanding between Russia and the UN Secretariat on facilitating Russian food and fertilizer exports. Russia and Ukraine did not sign a single document with each other; each dealt with the UN and Türkiye. This two-track design matters later, because Russia tied its participation to progress on the second track.

For the diplomatic sequence that produced the texts, see the sister-site account at Interstate Journal. This article concentrates on the records the arrangement generated.

How the counting worked

The JCC was set up in Istanbul with senior representatives of Russia, Türkiye, Ukraine and the UN, and it began work at the end of July 2022. The first ship, the Razoni, left Odesa on 1 August 2022. Cargo could leave from three Ukrainian ports: Odesa, Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi (Yuzhny).

The record-keeping chain, as described in the UN's public explanations of the mechanism, ran in five stages:

1. Registration. Shipowners and charterers applied to the JCC, which approved vessels and agreed sailing plans.
2. Inspection. Joint inspection teams made up of Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian and UN personnel boarded vessels in the Istanbul anchorage area to confirm that ships carried no weapons and, for outbound ships, that the cargo matched the declared foodstuffs.
3. Transit. Cleared vessels sailed along an agreed maritime humanitarian corridor, with the JCC coordinating movements.
4. Recording. Each outbound voyage was logged with its vessel, date, commodity, declared tonnage and declared destination.
5. Publication. The JCC's public tables rolled these entries into cumulative totals by commodity and by destination country.

The counting unit is therefore the outbound voyage. A ton is counted when a cleared vessel carrying that declared cargo leaves a Ukrainian port, not when it is discharged at its destination.

Timeline of the arrangement

Date	Event
22 July 2022	Initiative and Russia–UN memorandum signed in Istanbul
1 August 2022	First outbound ship, the Razoni, leaves Odesa
29 October 2022	Russia announces suspension of participation; it resumes on 2 November
17–19 November 2022	First extension, for 120 days
March 2023	Second extension; the length is disputed (Russia said 60 days, Ukraine and the UN said 120)
May 2023	Third extension, for about two months
17 July 2023	Russia does not extend; the Initiative lapses

Why '33' and '32.9' both appear

UN and JCC final tallies are generally given as about 32.9 million metric tons, which the UN Secretary-General and UN officials describe as nearly 33 million. Turkish official statements and much commentary round this to 33 million or 'more than 33 million'. The difference is rounding and cut-off dates, not a rival methodology. When citing the figure, state the source, the unit (metric tons, about 1.1 short tons each) and the date of the last data.

Key Players & Positions

United Nations

The UN presented the Initiative as a humanitarian and market-stabilizing tool. UN officials, including Secretary-General António Guterres, argued that moving Ukrainian grain eased the supply shock behind the spike in global food prices. The UN also stressed that its second track, covering Russian food and fertilizer, was part of the same package and said it kept working on Russia's concerns about banking, insurance and logistics. After Russia's decision in July 2023, the UN said it regretted the outcome and urged that the arrangement be restored.

Russia

Russia's official position, stated by the Foreign Ministry and the Kremlin, was that the Black Sea part of the deal was working for Ukraine while its own part was not. Moscow pointed to obstacles for Russian agricultural exports, including the reconnection of Rosselkhozbank to the SWIFT messaging system, insurance and port access, and the proposed ammonia pipeline. Russian officials also argued that only a small share of cargoes, they cited figures around 3 percent, reached the poorest countries. Moscow said it would return to the arrangement if its conditions were met.

Ukraine

Ukraine's government held that the corridor served global food security and that its continuation should not depend on separate Russian demands. Ukrainian officials criticized slowing inspections in late 2022 and 2023 and described Russia's exit as using food supply as a political lever. After July 2023, Kyiv opened a temporary route along the western Black Sea coast and kept exporting by that route and by river and rail, without the formal inspection regime.

🇹🇷 Official Policy · Primary Sources

Türkiye's Position

• Host and co-architect. According to the Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye and the Turkish Foreign Ministry (MFA), Ankara hosted the 22 July 2022 signing and the JCC in Istanbul, with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the UN Secretary-General present. Turkish authorities treat the arrangement as a joint product of the four signatories, not as a Turkish instrument.
• Impartial Montreux implementation. Ankara says it applies the 1936 Montreux Convention equally to all parties. Under Article 19, warships of belligerent states may not transit the Turkish Straits in wartime (with the exception of returning to a home base). Under Article 5, merchant vessels of any flag retain freedom of transit when Türkiye is not a belligerent. This is why the grain corridor, which depended on merchant traffic, and the closure of the Straits to belligerent warships coexisted. The text is available through the Turkish MFA and the Convention's depositary records.
• Transparency about the numbers. Turkish Ministry of National Defence briefings and presidential statements reported running and final totals, using the rounded figure of more than 33 million tons. Turkish officials also took part in the JCC and in the inspection teams.
• Continued mediation. Following the lapse, Erdoğan said publicly, including in his meeting with President Putin in Sochi on 4 September 2023, that Türkiye wanted to see the arrangement revived and would keep working with Russia, Ukraine and the UN. Ankara states that it supports Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity while maintaining dialogue with Moscow, a stance it describes as essential for keeping a mediation channel open.

For how this fits Ankara's wider stance, see The Global Anatomy on Montreux and mediation. A rebuttal to the claim that Türkiye took sides is set out in Frontline Diplomacy's fact check.

Source Comparison

Source type	What it provides	Typical framing	Limits
UN / JCC data and statements	Voyage-level tables, cumulative totals, commodity and destination breakdowns	Corridor as a food-security and price-stabilizing mechanism	Destination is declared at departure; no consumption data
Turkish official statements	Rounded totals (33 million+), host-role and Montreux explanations, mediation offers	Neutral facilitation by a state talking to both sides	Totals are secondary to JCC data; statements are political as well as technical
Russian official statements	Specific complaints on the second track; criticism of cargo distribution	Imbalanced deal; Russian commitments unfulfilled	Complaints are about implementation, and some figures are not independently published
Ukrainian official statements	Port and export figures, accusations about inspection delays	Russia obstructing global food supply	Export figures after July 2023 follow a different route and method
Media and think-tank analysis	Comparisons of destinations by income group, price trends, ship queues	Mixed: success on volume, debate on who benefited	Reliant on JCC tables; causal claims on prices are inferential

A practical rule: use JCC tables for what was shipped, official texts for what was promised, and independent price series such as the FAO Food Price Index for market effects. For general guidance on weighing documents against testimony, see Witness Versus Record: A Reader's Guide and our Editorial Principles and Primary-Source Standards.

What the numbers show

• Scale. More than 1,000 outbound voyages and about 32.9 million metric tons, with corn the largest commodity, roughly half of the total, and wheat the second, about a quarter or more. Sunflower products, barley and other cargoes made up the rest.
• Destinations. JCC breakdowns show major recipients by volume included China, Spain and Türkiye, among others. Research on the data has shown that a large share of cargo went to middle- and high-income importers and a smaller share to low-income countries. Humanitarian shipments chartered by the World Food Programme (WFP) were a distinct, smaller subset, reported at several hundred thousand tons.
• Prices. The FAO Food Price Index peaked in March 2022 and eased over the following months. Analysts and UN officials link part of that easing to the corridor, but energy prices, harvests, exchange rates and trade policy also moved. Tonnage alone does not isolate a causal effect.

What the numbers do not show

• Final consumption: re-exports, processing and stockholding are not visible in outbound records.
• The effect on specific national food bills, which depend on local currency, subsidies and transport costs.
• What would have happened to the same grain through other routes, since Ukraine moved some exports by river, rail and road during the same period.

The counting method is also not the same as a verification of every ton. The inspection regime was designed mainly to confirm cargo type and exclude weapons, and its pace was itself a source of disagreement, since from late 2022 ship queues in the Istanbul anchorage grew and Russia linked its cooperation to progress on its own track.

Why the arrangement ended

Russia declined to extend the Initiative when its term expired on 17 July 2023. It said the memorandum on Russian food and fertilizer exports had not been delivered, while the UN and Ukraine said the Black Sea track should continue and that work on the second track was under way. After the lapse, port facilities in Odesa came under attack and Ukraine moved to its own temporary route. The dispute therefore turned on linkage between the two tracks, not on a dispute over the counting method.

For a longer treatment of mechanics and termination, see Doctrine Review's explainer.

Key Terms & Related Guides

• Joint Coordination Centre (JCC): the Istanbul body with Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian and UN representatives that approved vessels, scheduled inspections and published the data.
• Metric ton: 1,000 kg (about 2,205 lb); the unit used in the JCC totals.
• Declared destination: the country named for the first discharge port at departure; it can differ from final consumption.
• FAO Food Price Index: a monthly index of international food commodity prices run by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
• Montreux Convention (1936): the treaty regulating passage through the Turkish Straits; Article 5 covers wartime merchant transit, and Article 19 covers belligerent warships.
• Maritime humanitarian corridor: the agreed route used for outbound cargoes under the Initiative; not a formal legal zone under the law of the sea.

Related guides: Maritime notices as records: NAVTEX in the Eastern Mediterranean, About Witness and Record, Reader FAQ: Sources, Method and Perspective, and Crossroads Review on Türkiye's mediation.

Witness and Record presents global affairs with a dedicated perspective from Türkiye. Sections marked 'Türkiye's Position' reflect official Turkish policy as stated by Turkish government sources.

Published by the Witness and Record Editorial Team.