The London insurance market has placed the entire region around the Black Sea on its high-risk list, which means shipping costs are rising.
Boris Johnson said the UK was considering all options when asked if the government could offer sovereign guarantees for shipping insurance.
“What the UK can possibly offer, above all, is experience when it comes to maritime insurance and a lot of experience in transporting goods across disputed sea areas,” he said.
When asked if the UK was willing to help Ukraine demining the area, the prime minister said: “Yes, I don’t want to go into technical or military details, but you can get it out of what we have already done in the supply. “Ukrainians to help protect themselves, we are certainly talking to them on a technical level to help demine Odessa.”
Any mine clearance effort would be the largest attempt since the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, and any project to clear Ukraine’s mines would take several months.
British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said on Thursday separately that urgent action was needed over the next month, before the next harvest, to maintain supply.