United Nations — Russia announced Monday that it would suspend its participation in a deal with Ukraine that has allowed both countries to continue exporting grain amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of the neighboring nation. The breaking of the Black Sea Grains InitiativeBrokered by the United Nations and Turkey, it threatened to drive up world food prices and underscored tension between the two sides as Ukraine pushes a counteroffensive against Russia’s nearly 17-month-old invasion.
“The Russians sent a letter this morning to the Joint Coordination Center in Istanbul announcing the termination of their participation in the Black Sea Initiative,” a UN official told CBS News.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced the move in Moscow on Monday, calling it a suspension rather than a termination. He repeated a complaint Russia has made since the deal was first agreed to last year, arguing that the United States and Ukraine’s other international partners were not allowing the pact to be carried out fairly by making it impossible for Russia to export some agricultural products.
“When the Russia-related part of the Black Sea agreement is implemented, Russia will immediately return to the implementation of the agreement,” Peskov told reporters.
Russia’s move came as Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba was in New York to speak at the UN. He joined CBS “Mornings” on Monday and called on Russia to “stop playing the hunger games.”
“Last year when the Black Sea Grain Initiative was introduced, grain prices in the world fell by 20%, so the immediate result of the non-extension of the agreement will mean that grain prices worldwide the world will rise, and people in the most vulnerable regions of Asia and Africa will feel it,” Kuleba said.
“Stop playing the hunger games with people all over the world,” he said, addressing Moscow. “It is impossible to fully compensate for the blockade of Ukrainian ports by internal routes, so Russia is using starvation as a tool to blackmail the world, pursuing its own commercial interests.”
Speaking to reporters at UN headquarters on Monday, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield called it “another act of cruelty” by Russia, accusing Moscow of holding “humanity hostage.” “.
Speaking last month on CBS’s “Face the Nation” as negotiations over a grain deal extension dragged on, World Food Program Director Cindy McCain warned that “hunger and famine” were real risks to vulnerable populations globally if Russia did not extend the pact.
Richard Gowan, the UN director for the International Crisis Group, told CBS News on Monday that it was significant that Russia “had not abandoned the deal for good.”
However, Gowan acknowledged that it could simply be “a tactic to force the UN and Western powers to offer more concessions to Moscow”, noting that Russia appeared to be “increasingly contemptuous of the UN in general”.
That may not bode well for the resurrection of the crucial grain export pact, which UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres personally helped broker.
UN Photo/Mark Garten
“I deeply regret the decision of the Russian Federation to end the implementation of the Black Sea Initiative, including the withdrawal of Russian guarantees of safety of navigation in the northwestern part of the Black Sea,” Guterres said Monday, crediting the deal. With safety”. passage of more than 32 million metric tons of food products from the ports of Ukraine”.
“At a time when food production and availability are disrupted by conflict, climate change, energy prices and more, these deals have helped reduce food prices by more than 23 percent since March of last year,” he said.
The UN, the US and several European nations and private banks have gone to great lengths to ensure that Russia can export its grains and fertilizers, as agreed under the terms of the grain deal, which has given Russia an excellent season. wheat exports and significant fertilizer exports
However, with many international banks tired of doing business with Moscow for fear of violating myriad international sanctions against Russia, the Kremlin wants a regularized payment system and has demanded that the country’s own agricultural bank be admitted to the bank payment system based in Belgium. known as SWIFT.
On Monday, the Office of the UN Coordinator In favor of the grain initiative, he said that since it was signed in Turkey last year, more than 1,000 ships had set sail from the three ports designated for shipments from Ukraine under the agreement.
The UN acknowledged on Monday that several aspects of the agreement still need to be changed, as “the July 22 agreement allows for the export of fertilizers, including ammonia, but none have been shipped under the Initiative.”
The world body noted that since the end of April, “no ships have been allowed to proceed to the port of Yuzhny/Pivdennyi”, one of the three Ukrainian ports designated under the pact, indicating that Russia has also been negligent in compliance with the agreement. .
The agreement has allowed the safe export of more than 32.8 million tons of cereals, other foodstuffs and fertilizers since it began in July last year, greatly easing the global food price crisis.
The deal never included a single document with signatures from Russian and Ukrainian officials, but there were separate Memorandums of Understanding, including one between the UN and Russia that said the UN would help ensure Russian fertilizers weren’t blocked by secondary sanctions on ships. . , insurance or banking.
When first negotiated by Turkey and the UN, the pact’s purpose was to alleviate the drastic disruption in the global supply of grain, food and fertilizer that result of “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine”.
Both countries are among the world’s leading cereal producers, and the war launched by the government of Vladimir Putin in February 2022, especially with the fighting around the only maritime coast of Ukraine, stopped exports almost completelycausing food prices to skyrocket.
The historic agreement allowed the resumption of the export of wheat, sunflower oil and barley, which helped reduce food prices around the world.
While there have been concerns about the impact of the suspension of the grain deal, it may be partly mitigated because Russia has recently increased wheat and corn exports.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the UN’s Guterres had urged Russia to renew the deal and several parties have said talks were still ongoing to find a new deal.
Discover more from PressNewsAgency
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.