A worker processes wheat grains in stock at the Aranka Malom kft plant in Bicske, Hungary on Tuesday, May 16, 2023. The Black Sea Agreement has allowed Ukraine to ship more than 30 million tons of products from three major ports, which helped bring down global food prices after they spiked following the Russian invasion.
Akos mill | Bloomberg | beautiful pictures
HO CHI MINH CITY — A landmark agricultural deal brokered by Ukraine and Russia is set to expire on Monday, a revelation that is expected to exacerbate the global consequences of the Kremlin’s ongoing war if Moscow withdraws from the Kremlin. refused to extend the agreement.
Last week, Secretary General Antonio Guterres sent a letter to the President of Russia Putin Make proposals to save the deal. On Friday, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters that conversations with the Kremlin via Signal and WhatsApp would continue over the weekend.
Moscow’s insistence that the current deal only supports Ukrainian agricultural products and not Russian fertilizer exports is also included in the agreement but has yet to depart for global destinations.
On Thursday, Putin reiterated Moscow’s stance and threatened for the fourth time since the start of the deal not to renew it.
A Ukrainian soldier stands in front of a grain silo from the Black Sea port of Odesa, before transporting grain as the Ukrainian government awaits signals from the United Nations and Turkey to start shipping grain, amid Russia Invasion of Ukraine, in Odesa, Ukraine July 29, 2022. REUTERS/Nacho Doce
Nacho Doce | Reuters
Before Russian troops crossed the Ukrainian border in late February 2022, Kiev and Moscow accounted for nearly a quarter of global grain exports. Those agricultural shipments were stalled for nearly six months until representatives from Ukraine, Russia, the United Nations and Turkey agreed to establish a humanitarian corridor at sea under the Agreement. Black Sea Grains Initiative.
The deal, brokered in July last year, eased Russia’s naval blockade with the reopening of three main Ukrainian ports.
Under this agreement, more than 1,000 ships carrying nearly 33 million tons of agricultural products have left the Ukrainian ports of Odesa, Chornomorsk and Yuzhny-Pivdennyi.
The Agreement has also supervise the transportation of 725,167 tons of wheat sailing on World Food Program ships to some of the world’s most food-starved countries, such as Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
The United Nations-backed organization responsible for tracking exports under the agreement said in an update on Saturday that for almost three months, no ships had sailed from the Ukrainian port of Yuzhny-Pivdennyi. Furthermore, no new ships have been allowed to leave Ukraine in the past two weeks.
‘Not the deal we agreed to’
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Moscow’s top diplomat Sergei Lavrov both blame the West for global insecurity and instability.
Sean Gallup
In April, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that if the Black Sea Grains Initiative did not incorporate fertilizer products soon, Moscow would not renew the agreement.
“It’s not called the grain deal it’s called the Black Sea Initiative and in the text itself the agreement says this applies to expanding opportunities for grain and fertilizer exports. fertilizer,” Mr. Lavrov told reporters during the April 26 meeting press conference at the UN
“It’s not the deal we agreed to on July 22,” he said, adding that there were dozens of Russian ships loaded with about 200,000 tons of fertilizer waiting to be exported. In addition to including fertilizer exports, the Kremlin has also requested the resumption of a pipeline that runs through Russia and ends at a Ukrainian port.
One of Moscow’s top demands, however, is for the Agricultural Bank of Russia, or Rosselkhozbank, to return to the SWIFT banking system.
Exclude Moscow from SWIFTstands for the Association for Global Interbank Financial Telecommunication, which cut the country off from many of the world’s financial networks in the days following the full-blown invasion of Russia.
