Russia said on Thursday it was facilitating the export of grain and oilseeds from Ukraine through transit points on the Sea of Azov.
Russia did not specify who provides food for export.
Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Victoria Abramchenko rejected the accusation of shipping Ukrainian grain in an interview with Reuters, saying, “Russia does not ship grain from Ukraine.”
“Russia provides a ‘green (safe) corridor’ for grain and any other foodstuffs such as oilseeds… so that they can be exported from Ukraine without obstacles (via) Melitopol or Berdyansk,” she added.
Ukraine’s inability to use its main port, Odessa, has led to a jump in global food prices and United Nations warnings of hunger in poor countries that rely heavily on grain imports.
Abramchenko reiterated Russia’s position that Ukraine should open sea lanes to the mined port of Odessa.
Each side accuses the other of laying mines to block access to the port.
“We cannot provide a green corridor to Odessa because Ukraine did everything in its power to make this port not work,” Abramchenko said.
Ukraine’s exports have fallen sharply this year as it tries to transport food along slow routes using roads, rivers and railways.
Russia, which competes mainly with the European Union and Ukraine for supplying wheat to the Middle East and Africa, has been restricting exports since 2021 with export taxes and quotas in an effort to slow domestic food price inflation.
Abramchenko said Russia has obtained seed supplies from 11 countries, including Serbia, Turkey, Israel and Egypt, which have not joined Western sanctions as they seek to protect their food security.
She added that Russia would have to delay the implementation of climate-related projects due to restrictions on imports of foreign equipment, but that it would remain in the Paris climate agreement.
Before the latest sanctions, Russia planned to be carbon neutral by 2060 at the latest, and was testing the concept by trying to make the fossil-fuel-rich Sakhalin island in the Pacific Ocean carbon-neutral by 2025.
Abramchenko said Moscow would delay some green energy projects for two years.
She added that a pilot project to start trading carbon emissions in Sakhalin will start this year as scheduled. However, Russia’s carbon emissions calculation method is not in line with the Paris Agreement.
(Prepared by Muhammad Ali Farag for the Arab Bulletin – Edited by Ali Khafaji)
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