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Ukraine's foreign minister publicly called out Egypt on Tuesday for allowing a vessel allegedly carrying looted Ukrainian wheat to unload at an Egyptian port, escalating a diplomatic dispute over what Kyiv describes as a Russian scheme to launder stolen agricultural goods through Egyptian waters.
Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said the ASOMATOS vessel was permitted to dock at Abu Qir Port and offload 26,900 tons of what he called "stolen Ukrainian wheat," despite Ukraine having formally requested Egypt intercept the shipment four days earlier. He described the incident as the fourth such case of "Russia's grain laundering in Egyptian ports since April."
Sybiha said Ukraine's Prosecutor General had already submitted a formal legal assistance request to Egypt's Ministry of Justice, providing what he described as all necessary data and legal grounds to seize the vessel and its cargo before it docked. The grain, he said, was exported by the sanctioned company Agro-Frigat via Russian-occupied Crimea, in violation of international law.
In a post on X, Sybiha said the vessel "was allowed to dock and unload despite" the prior legal request, framing Egypt's inaction as a direct rebuff of Kyiv's diplomatic outreach.
Sybiha sharpened his language by drawing a historical parallel to the Holodomor, the Soviet-engineered famine of the 1930s in which millions of Ukrainians perished after Moscow forcibly extracted grain from the country. "Ukraine survived a genocide through hunger last century when Moscow ordered grain to be taken away from our people," he said. "Now that Moscow again steals our grain, it invokes our worst memories."
The Holodomor, recognized as a genocide by Ukraine and dozens of other countries, remains a defining trauma in Ukrainian national memory and a politically charged reference point in wartime discourse.
Sybiha also appealed to Egypt's own interests, noting that Ukraine has long served as a major wheat supplier to Cairo, one of the world's largest importers of grain. "We don't understand why Egyptian partners pay us back by continuing to accept stolen Ukrainian grain," he said, urging Egypt to "uphold international law."
He closed with a blunt message to all countries receiving such shipments: "Stolen goods from occupied territories must be seized, not accepted. Looting is not trade, and complicity only fuels further aggression."
Egyptian authorities had not issued any response to Ukraine's statement at the time of publication.
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