Johannesburg (agencies)
Key African countries have stressed the need for grain imports to solve food security as Russian President Vladimir Putin prepares to hold talks with continental leaders about the fate of a deal allowing safe exports of food and fertilizer from Ukraine across the Black Sea.
Last Tuesday, Putin said that Russia is considering withdrawing from the grain export agreement across the Black Sea, which is expected to expire on July 17, and which was brokered by the United Nations and Turkey in July last year, due to the continuing obstacles to exporting grain and fertilizers from his country.
A delegation of African leaders will visit Ukraine and Russia early next week in an effort to end the 16-month-old crisis, and Putin said he would talk about it during that visit.
Vincent Magwenya, a spokesman for South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, said the president believed his Russian counterparts Putin and Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelensky agreed with him on “the importance of grain supply to Africa to reduce food insecurity.”
And the Kremlin said yesterday that it does not see any positive prospects regarding the renewal of the agreement to export grain through the Black Sea, because the terms of the agreement related to Russia have not yet been achieved.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, “The work is continuing, but we, quite frankly, do not see any positive prospects. Everything that was agreed upon regarding us has not been achieved,” noting that the current situation cannot continue indefinitely.
The Russian president complained that almost nothing had reached African countries under the deal, and said Moscow was ready to supply free grain to the world’s poorest countries.
The United Nations describes the agreement to export grain across the Black Sea as a trade project that benefits poor countries by helping to reduce food prices worldwide.
According to United Nations data, more than 31 million tons of grain were exported under the agreement, 43 percent of it to developing countries.
The United Nations World Food Program has also shipped more than 625,000 tons of grain for relief operations.
The grain agreement was initially supposed to last for 120 days before Russia agreed to extend it 3 times, but it warned yesterday that “good intentions” could not last forever.
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