Moscow says Black Sea grain deal is dead
The Black Sea grain initiative was last renewed on May 17 for two months | Igor Tkachenko/EPA via EFE
The Kremlin said on Monday that a U.N.-brokered deal to allow the safe passage of Ukrainian grain exports through the Black Sea is terminated, claiming that Russia's conditions had not been met.
"The Black Sea agreements ceased to be valid today," Dmitry Peskov, President Vladimir Putin's press secretary, was quoted by state news agency TASS as saying.
"As the president of the Russian Federation said earlier, the deadline is July 17. Unfortunately, the part relating to Russia in this Black Sea agreement has not been implemented so far. Therefore, its effect is terminated," Peskov said.
"As soon as the Russian conditions are met, the Russian Federation will return to the implementation of the deal,” he said.
Russia notified the other parties of its withdrawal from the initiative in a letter sent to the Istanbul-based Joint Coordination Center, set up to monitor the deal’s implementation, a U.N. official confirmed to POLITICO.
The Black Sea grain initiative, which was first brokered by the United Nations and Turkey a year ago in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, was last renewed on May 17 for two months. Some 33 million metric tons of grain and oilseeds have so far been exported under the deal, which has been extended three times, offering a lifeline to Ukraine’s farmers and to food-insecure countries in the Global South.
Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra blasted Moscow's move, saying it threatens food prices and market stability. "It is utterly immoral that Russia continues to weaponize food," Hoekstra said in a tweet.
'Enough is enough'
Moscow has repeatedly said it would not agree to a further extension, claiming that it is not seeing the benefit of the pact. "Hidden" Western sanctions, the Kremlin says, are hindering Russia's own food and fertilizer exports and thus contravening a second deal agreed last July under which the U.N. committed to facilitate these exports for a three-year period.
Last Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres sent a letter to Putin putting forward a compromise proposal to meet a Kremlin demand that Russia’s state agricultural bank be readmitted to the SWIFT payments system.
Two days later, however, Putin reiterated that conditions required for Russia to extend the pact had not been met. "We voluntarily extended this so-called deal many times. Many times. But listen, in the end, enough is enough," the Russian president said in a TV interview on Thursday night.
“Russia is exporting record amounts of grain,” Ambassador Jim O’Brien, head of the State Department’s Office of Sanctions Coordination, told POLITICO ahead in an interview ahead of Monday’s announcement in Moscow.
“There's no evidence that Russia is impeded in its exports,” he said, adding that the EU, the U.S., the U.K and U.N. have worked very closely with specific companies said to be facing difficulties to address their concerns.
Last ship
The last ship to travel under the pact left Ukraine’s Odesa port on Sunday morning, according to Reuters. In the run-up to the July 17 deadline, the number of shipments had fallen — dropping to 1.3 million metric tons in May from 4.2 million last October — while no new vessels have been registered under the initiative since the end of June.
Kyiv, which accuses Moscow of sabotaging the deal, is readying alternative routes to export its grain and oilseed crops.
Aid agencies, meanwhile, are bracing for the impact of the deal’s end on global food prices, which they say will hit the world’s most vulnerable in food-insecure countries the hardest.
Wheat prices rose 3 percent on Monday, bringing cumulative gains since the middle of last week to 12 percent, said Carlos Mera, head of agricultural commodities markets at Rabobank. Without the deal, Ukraine will have to export most of its grain and oilseeds via the Danube river, driving up transport and logistics cost and pushing down prices for farmers, who may subsequently plant less, he said.
“This situation means poor countries in Africa and the Middle East will be more dependent on Russian wheat,” said Mera.
Russia’s withdrawal from the initiative “would make it solely responsible for a devastating blow to global grain security,” said O’Brien. “President Putin is well aware that if he chooses to impede or end this arrangement, that he'll be causing a great deal of trouble for the Global South.”
Source: POLITICO Europe
