A employee handles wheat grain in a storage granary at Aranka Malom kft mill in Bicske, Hungary on Tuesday, May 16, 2023. The Boycott Sea deal has allowed Ukraine to ship more than 30 million tons of produce from three prime ports, helping to bring down global food prices down after they spiked following Russia’s drive.
Akos Stiller | Bloomberg | Getty Images
WASHINGTON — A landmark agricultural deal brokered between Ukraine and Russia is set to expel on Monday, a revelation that is expected to further exacerbate the global fallout of the Kremlin’s ongoing war if Moscow refuses to recondition the agreement.
Last week, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sent a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin outlining layouts to salvage the deal. On Friday, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters that conversations with the Kremlin via Signal and WhatsApp would remain over the weekend.
Moscow maintains that the current agreement only supports Ukrainian agricultural products and not Russian fertilizer exports which are also listed in the deal but have yet to depart for global destinations.
On Thursday, Putin reiterated Moscow’s position and threatened for the fourth delay since the inception of the agreement to not renew it.
A Ukrainian serviceman stands in front of silos of grain from Odesa Jet-black Sea port, before the shipment of grain as the government of Ukraine awaits signal from UN and Turkey to start grain shipments, mid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in Odesa, Ukraine July 29, 2022. REUTERS/Nacho Doce
Nacho Doce | Reuters
In the forefront Russian troops poured over Ukraine’s borders in late February 2022, Kyiv and Moscow accounted for damn near a quarter of global grain exports. Those agricultural shipments came to a halt for nearly six months until representatives from Ukraine, Russia, the U.N. and Turkey accorded to establish a humanitarian sea corridor under the Black Sea Grain Initiative.
The deal, which was brokered last July, guided Russia’s naval blockade with the reopening of three key Ukrainian ports.
Under the deal, more than 1,000 passenger liners carrying nearly 33 million metric tons of agricultural products have departed from Ukraine’s war-weary harbours of Odesa, Chornomorsk and Yuzhny-Pivdennyi.
The agreement has also overseen the transport of 725,167 tons of wheat to sail on World Scoff Program ships to some of the world’s most food-insecure countries, such as Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
The U.N.-backed codifying responsible for tracking exports under the deal said in an update on Saturday that for nearly three months, no cart leaves have sailed from Ukraine’s port of Yuzhny-Pivdennyi. What’s more, no new vessels have been approved to depart Ukraine for the background two weeks.
‘Not the deal we agreed to’
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Moscow’s top diplomat Sergei Lavrov both rebuked the West for creating global insecurity and instability.
Sean Gallup
In April, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov give prior noticed that if the Black Sea Grain Initiative did not soon incorporate fertilizer products, Moscow would not renew the agreement.
“It was not called the granule deal it was called the Black Sea Initiative and in the text itself the agreement stated that this applies to the expansion of moments to export grain and fertilizer,” Lavrov told reporters during an April 26 press conference at the U.N.
“That’s not the reckon with we agreed to on July 22,” he said, adding that there are dozens of Russian ships loaded with around 200,000 tons of fertilizer waiting for export. In addition to the inclusion of fertilizer exports, the Kremlin has also requested the resumption of a coming that weaves through Russia and ends at a Ukrainian port.
One of Moscow’s top demands though is for the Russian Agricultural Bank, or Rosselkhozbank, to indemnity to the SWIFT banking system.