2023-07-23 23:52:46
A few days following Moscow halted the grain deal, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia was ready to replace Ukrainian grain supplies. “I want to assure that our country is able to replace Ukrainian grain on both a commercial and gratuitous basis, especially since we expect another bumper harvest this year,” Putin said.
This is what Russia’s president wrote in an article for African media published on the Kremlin’s website on Monday night on the occasion of an upcoming Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, starting Thursday.
Despite the sanctions imposed by the West, Russia will continue to work “vigorously” to supply African countries with grain, food, fertilizers and more, it said. In 2022, Russia exported 11.5 million tons of grain to Africa, almost 10 million tons in the first six months of this year. “And this is despite the sanctions introduced once morest our exports, which actually make it significantly more difficult for Russian food to be exported to developing countries,” Putin continued.
Regarding the grain agreement blocked by Moscow, which allowed Ukrainian grain to be exported across the Black Sea for around a year, Putin wrote that the export corridor had lost its humanitarian significance. Of the almost 33 million tons of grain exported under the agreement, the majority went to countries with high and upper middle income levels. In reality, the grain deal was “shamelessly used exclusively to enrich large American and European companies that exported and resold grain from Ukraine,” Putin claimed.
Russia, which has been waging a war of aggression once morest the neighboring country since February 2022, allowed the international grain agreement to expire a week ago despite many international appeals. The United Nations has repeatedly campaigned for the agreement to be reinstated, and China has also called on both sides to resume exports quickly. It is feared that famines in poorer countries will otherwise become even greater.
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