The United Nations expected the first grain ships to leave Ukraine's ports on Friday at the earliest, although details of their route are not yet known.

The United Nations Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief, Martin Griffiths, said in New York that ships were loaded with grain and ready to sail, noting that work is still underway to determine the exact coordinates by Ukraine and Russia, as well as the United Nations and Turkey.

The UN coordinator said he hoped the first shipment of grain would sail from a Ukrainian port on the Black Sea "as soon as Friday," but noted that "necessary" details for the safe passage of ships were still being investigated.

Griffiths added that military officials from Turkey, Russia and Ukraine are working with a United Nations team at a joint coordination center in Istanbul, to come up with standard operating procedures regarding the agreement reached by the four parties last Friday.

"These are detailed negotiations based on the agreement...but without standard operating procedures we cannot manage safe transit for ships," he told a briefing to UN member states on Thursday.

The Istanbul Agreement was signed by Russia and Ukraine separately and under the auspices of the United Nations and Turkish mediation (Reuters)

"We don't see any potential standard... without our procedures being clear and understandable to the commercial sector," he told a news conference later.

"The devil is in the details," Griffiths admitted, but said no major problems had emerged so far, adding that one aspect under negotiation was the exact coordinates of the safe shipping channels.

On July 22, a ceremony was held in Istanbul, under the patronage of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a signing ceremony for the Safe Shipping Initiative for Grain and Foodstuffs from Ukrainian Ports between Turkey, Russia, Ukraine and the United Nations.

The agreement guarantees securing exports of grain stuck in the Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea (Eastern Europe) to the world.

And the city of Istanbul witnessed, earlier last Wednesday, the opening of the coordination center to ensure the safe shipment of grain from Ukrainian ports.

Under the agreement, Ukraine pledged to guide the ships through the mined waters, and Russia promised not to target them. The United Nations and Turkey will assist in the process of coordinating exports and controlling shipments in order to ensure that ships do not smuggle weapons into the war zone.

Once the ships move in and the deal is fully implemented, Griffiths said, exports from the ports will eventually reach pre-war levels of 5 million tons per month.

broken shipments

More than 20 million tons of grain from last year's harvest are still stuck waiting for export, according to data from Ukraine, which is described as the "breadbasket of Europe".

According to Ukrainian officials, Ukraine's grain exports may reach 3.5 million tons per month in the near future.

Taras Vysotsky, Ukraine's first deputy minister of agriculture, said last Monday that the volume of grain exports would gradually increase every month, starting from about 1.5 million tons in August.

It is noteworthy that on February 24, Russia launched an attack on Ukraine, followed by international rejection and severe economic sanctions against Moscow, which stipulate to end its operation that Kyiv abandon plans to join military entities and remain neutral, which the latter considers an interference in its sovereignty.