The Kremlin says it is impossible for Russia to return to the Black Sea grain export deal until an agreement related to Russian interests is honoured, rebuffing a call by UN secretary-general António Guterres for Moscow to rejoin.
Key points:
- Russia says the deal can not be resumed until its own fertiliser exports are protected
- Both Russia and Ukraine have warned that ships entering Black Sea ports could be assumed to be military targets
- European Union ministers met to discuss ways to bypass Ukraine ports to ensure grain supplies for Africa and other markets
Mr Guterres on Monday urged Russia to resume allowing Ukraine to export grain safely from its seaports despite what Russia calls its “special military operation”, in line with a proposal he had made to President Vladimir Putin.
But the Kremlin suggested Mr Guterres’s proposal did not address its main complaint: that there had been no progress on a related agreement that was designed to facilitate Russian food and fertiliser exports amid Western sanctions imposed in response to the war.
“Indeed, Mr Guterres’s letter again set out some kind of action plan and contained promises that at some point it would be possible to implement the Russian part of these arrangements,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
“Unfortunately, at the moment, it is impossible to return to the deal because it [the Russia-related agreement] is not being implemented, and de facto it has never been implemented.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Russia said it had repelled a drone attack overnight on a military patrol boat in the Black Sea, where both Russia and Ukraine have warned that ships approaching enemy ports could be treated as military targets.
Over the past several days, Russia has targeted Ukrainian critical grain export infrastructure since it vowed retribution for an attack that damaged a crucial bridge between Russia and the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula. Russian officials blamed that strike on Ukrainian drone boats.
Ukraine also is seeking to continue exporting grain by sea. It sent a letter to the United Nations International Maritime Organization establishing its own temporary shipping corridor, saying it would “provide guarantees of compensation for damage.”
But Russia warned it would assume ships traversing parts of the Black Sea to be carrying weapons to Ukraine.
In a seeming tit-for-tat move, Ukraine said vessels heading to Russian Black Sea ports would be considered “carrying military cargo with all the associated risks”.
European Union looks for way around Black Sea ports
Russia’s rejection of the grain deal came after European Union agriculture ministers met on Tuesday to discuss alternate ways of moving grain vital to global food security out of Ukraine.
At the same time, they want to protect prices for farmers in countries bordering the war-ravaged nation.
Germany’s agriculture minister, Cem Özdemir, warned that the ministers must seek to balance those two issues without eroding the EU’s support for Ukraine in the war sparked by last year’s invasion.
If cracks open up in EU unity, “the only one who is happy is Vladimir Putin,” he said.
The ministers met in Brussels for the first time since Russia pulled the plug last week on the wartime deal that allowed grain to flow from Ukraine to countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, where hunger is a growing threat and high food prices have pushed more people into poverty.
The deal provided guarantees that ships would not be attacked when entering and leaving Ukrainian ports, while a separate agreement facilitated the movement of Russian food and fertiliser.
Finland’s agriculture minister, Sari Essayah, said Russia’s ending of the grain deal was “a very serious problem, not only in the EU markets, but it would have some consequences for the food for security all over”.
She said ministers “must make sure that the Ukrainian grain can reach the global markets via EU territory”.
Poland’s agriculture minister Robert Telus was set to tell the EU meeting that his country, along with Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, were extending their ban on Ukrainian grain imports, but would still allow food to move through their countries to other parts of the world.
Lithuania’s agriculture minister, Kęstutis Navickas, suggested that export procedures for grain could be shifted from the Ukraine-Polish border to Lithuanian ports as a way of preventing grain from getting stuck in Poland and causing a supply glut and reduced prices for local farmers.
Germany’s Mr Özdemir appeared to support the plan, saying grain from Ukraine could be transported in sealed containers to ports in the Baltic.
“I’m sure the friends from the Baltics would be happy to help and then transport to where it’s needed in the Global South,” Mr Özdemir said.
AP/Reuters/AFP