Ukraine and Russia will soon sign an agreement to allow grain exports through the Black Sea, as the Turkish presidency announced on Thursday, and Gazprom resumed gas supplies to Europe through the Nord Stream pipeline.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will accompany Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and representatives of Ukraine and Russia at the signing ceremony of the agreement on Friday at 1:30 p.m. GMT in Istanbul, the Turkish presidency said.
The United States welcomed the agreement brokered by Turkey and loaded Russia with the responsibility of fulfilling the agreement.
“We welcome the announcement of this deal, but what we are focused on now is holding Russia accountable for implementing this deal,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters.
The first agreement reached between Ukraine and Russia Since the start of the war, February 24 comes at a time when food prices are exploding on a global scale, threatening the poorest countries with famine.
About 25 million tons of wheat and other food are blocked in Ukrainian ports by Russian warships and mines that Ukraine planted to prevent a waterborne assault.
Turkey’s foreign minister had expressed his “optimism” about an agreement in the “next few days”, if the Western countries responded to Russia’s demands.
Russian President Vladimir Putin set an additional condition this week by demanding that his country’s grains be included in the negotiations.
Europe receives Russian gas again
Europe breathed a sigh of relief this Thursday after Russia reopened its gas flow through Nord Stream, after a suspension of operations for maintenance.
According to the first data published by the German operator of this network, Gascade, the flow is equivalent to what this gas pipeline registered before the suspension, which corresponds to 40% of its capacity.
Russia blamed Westerners for the problems technicians in the supply of gas to Europe.
“It is the restrictions that prevent the equipment from being repaired, especially the turbines in the compression stations,” said the spokesman for the presidency, Dmitri Peskov.
The possible lack of gas alarms many European countries.
Russia will “study” the possibility of supply supplementary gas this year to Hungary, a country that imports 65% of its oil from Russia and 80% of its gas, declared the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, after an interview in Moscow with his Hungarian counterpart, Peter Szijjarto.
Meanwhile, the European Commission is preparing the ground to face a possible gas shortage during the winter.
The plan of the European executive will be debated on July 26, but Spain, Portugal and Greece have already announced their opposition.
“Nuclear Cliff”
On the ground, Russia continued its deadly bombardments against the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv (northeast), the country’s second largest city, where at least three people were killed and 23 wounded, the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office said.
Ukraine accused Russia of storing heavy weapons and ammunition at the site of the occupied Zaporizhia nuclear power plant (south), the largest in Europe and under the control of Kremlin forces since March.
Russia, for its part, denounced that the Ukrainian forces carried out drone attacks this week “a few dozen meters from vital structures for the plant’s safety”.
In Kramatorsk, the scene of heavy fighting in recent months, a school used as a food depot was bombed on Thursday, according to Ukrainian officials.
In an exclusive interview with AFP, Alexander Lukashenko, President of Belarus and main ally of the Kremlin, he urged the West, Russia and Ukraine to negotiate to avoid a nuclear escalation.
“Come on, let’s stop. We must not go further. Beyond is the precipice, it is nuclear war,” the Belarusian leader said.
Mercosur rejects Zelensky’s speech
Ukraine, whose economy has collapsed since the start of the Russian invasion, announced a 25% devaluation of its currency against the dollar.
“This measure will strengthen the competitiveness of Ukrainian producers” and “support the stability of the economy in war conditions“, the Central Bank said in a statement.
At the diplomatic level, the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelenski, suffered a setback with the refusal of Mercosur -Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay- to allow him to deliver a speech at their summit of heads of state on Thursday.
“There was no consensus,” Raúl Cano, deputy minister of Foreign Relations of Paraguay, host country of the meeting of presidents.
Cano explained that all the bloc’s decisions are made by consensus, but he did not identify the country or countries that opposed Zelenski’s intervention.