Westerners cannot hit Russia with “crazy” economic sanctions and at the same time expect the country to guarantee food supplies, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday.
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had accused Moscow the same day, at a meeting of the UN Security Council hosted by the United States, of taking hostage “the food supply of millions of Ukrainians and millions of other people around the world.
“Our country is ready to assume all its obligations, reacted Mr. Medvedev. But he also expects the help of his trading partners, ”said the current vice-president of the Security Council of Russia on Telegram messaging.
“Otherwise it doesn’t make sense: on the one hand they impose crazy sanctions on us and on the other they demand that we ensure the food supply. It doesn’t work like that, we are not stupid,” added the former president (2008-2012).
Russia and Ukraine provide 30% of the planet’s food supply.
The United States and Russia blamed themselves on Thursday at the UN for worsening food insecurity around the world, with Washington calling on Moscow to allow Ukrainian grain exports blocked at Black Sea ports.
“Stop blocking Black Sea ports! Allow the free movement of ships, trains and trucks carrying food outside Ukraine,” Antony Blinken said.
AFP
“Stop threatening to suspend food and fertilizer exports to countries that criticize your war of aggression,” he added.
Denouncing a Western desire “to make Russia bear the hat for all the problems of the world”, the Russian ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia rejected the Western accusations as a whole.
The food crisis in the world has existed for a long time and its root causes come from an “inflationary spiral” fueled by rising insurance costs, difficult logistics flows, and “speculation in Western markets”, said the diplomat Russian.
The day following UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Russia to free Ukrainian grain exports, some 80 countries in total had planned to speak at the Security Council meeting on Thursday.