France and Turkey have proposed "rival" plans for the export of grain from Ukraine, The Guardian reported.

According to the newspaper, Turkey is promoting the option of safe routes from three Ukrainian ports, even though the ports have not been de-mined. This would require the clearance of more than 400 mines, but Ukraine is wary of clearing the passage for Russian ships entering its ports.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the location of the mines was known, so "certain security lines" would be established in the three ports.

However, Davyd Arakhamia a member of the Ukrainian negotiating team, questioned the plan.

"Our military is against it, so we have very limited optimism about this model," he said.

For his part, French President Emmanuel Macron called for doubling the number of land and rail routes to the major Romanian port of Constanta, more than 450 kilometers south of Odessa.

"Odessa is a few tens of kilometers from Romania, and through Romania [we] will be able to reach the Danube and the railroad. We are in the process of creating a kind of connection point where we could export this grain much more actively, more quickly and on a larger scale than we do today," Macron said.