Gideon Sa’ar, the Israeli foreign minister, took issue with the way that he said his Ukrainian counterpart accused the Jewish state of receiving grain, which Russia allegedly stole, at a port in Haifa.
“One would expect the submission of a legal request before tweeting. You chose differently, for your own reasons,” Sa’ar stated on Wednesday. “Finally, you submitted the request late last night and now you are following it up with another tweet. The request is now being examined by the relevant authorities.”
Andrii Sybiha, the Ukrainian foreign minister, stated that his country had “officially addressed Israel through diplomatic and legal channels” about the vessel, Panormitis, a bulk, Panama-flagged carrier that is “suspected of carrying a grain cargo that was illegally transported from a closed port in the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine in violation of international law and Ukrainian legislation.”
“This is not Twitter diplomacy but a very concrete legal and diplomatic request for international legal assistance that necessitates a response,” the Ukrainian minister stated. “We expect the Israeli side to take it seriously rather than responding with emotional statements.”
The prior day, Sa’ar said at a press conference in Jerusalem alongside his Serbian counterpart that “we reject twitter diplomacy, and we will not be influenced by that.”
“The vessel has not entered the port and has yet to submit its documents,” Sa’ar told reporters on Tuesday. “It’s not possible to verify the truth of the Ukrainian claims regarding the forgery of the bill of lading. Up to this point, the Ukrainian government has not submitted a request for legal assistance. They submitted tweets.”
On Monday, the Ukrainian foreign minister said that if Israel accepted “stolen grain,” it would harm bilateral relations between the two countries, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, threatened Israel with sanctions on Tuesday.
“In any normal country, purchasing stolen goods is an act that entails legal liability,” Zelenskyy wrote. “This applies, in particular, to grain stolen by Russia.”
Eugene Kontorovich, professor of law at George Mason University and executive director of its Middle East and international law center and director of the international law department at the Jerusalem think tank Kohelet Policy Forum, disputed Zelenskyy’s assertion of legal liability.
“There is absolutely no legal prohibition on such imports. Israel is not required to boycott Russian-occupied areas,” he told JNS. “Most nations on earth don’t, but Ukraine is not threatening to boycott Turkey or Lebanon. This looks like a deliberate effort to set Israel up for E.U. sanctions, which the European Union has wanted to impose anyway.”
The union said this week that it is mulling sanctions against Israel. “We condemn all actions that help fund Russia’s illegal war effort and circumvent E.U. sanctions and remain ready to target such actions by listing individuals and entities in third countries if necessary,” a spokesman for the European Commission stated.
A top global wheat exporter, Ukraine has claimed that Russia has stolen at least 15 million tons of Ukrainian grain since the start of the war in 2022. Israeli-Ukrainian relations have been strained over the last four years, as Jerusalem has sought to maintain ties with both Kyiv and Moscow amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
