On Wednesday, Reuters reported that Ukraine is seeking an extension of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which the UN brokered, for at least one additional year. The report cited Ukraine’s deputy minister of infrastructure, Yury Vaskov.

The agreement, which was brokered by the UN, between Ukraine, Russia, and Türkiye, allowed Ukraine to export shipments of wheat and other agricultural products out of the country, without the exports being disrupted by the conflict.

Vaskov said Ukraine would also push to have additional ports be included in the agreement. The deal was crafted to offer protection to three ports, Odessa, Chernomorsk, and Yuzhny, which export roughly 3 million tons of products per month. Vaskov noted that the addition of the ports at Nikolaev, could increase the export capacity protected by the agreement by another 2 million tons per month.

Vaskov said, “A formal proposal will come from us this week on the need to work on an extension… We will request… to extend it not for 120 days but for at least one year because the Ukrainian and global agricultural market needs to be able to plan these volumes (of exports) in the long term.”  He also said Ukraine would demand more cargo inspectors be included “in order to eliminate the accumulation of vessels waiting for inspection.”

The agreement will expire on March 18th unless an extension can be agreed to. Talks are expected to start shortly, however the official date has not yet been set. The original 120-day agreement was extended once already back in November.

It is unclear how receptive Moscow will be to renewing the agreement, however. Under the original deal, Russia was to receive assistance from the UN in resuming its own grain shipments through the Black Sea. Although the Russian grain shipments were not directly targeted by the sanctions, shipping restrictions have impacted the shipments of grains. However Moscow has noted that once the deal was agreed to, the UN offered no such assistance.

Last month, Russia’s UN ambassador pointed out that not a single Russian grain shipment has resulted from the agreement. Meanwhile, Moscow has also shown that most of the grains shipped from Ukraine were not being shipped to poorer countries for humanitarian purposes, as was agreed upon, but rather is being shipped to Western Europe, for substantial profit.