Russia changes course and rejoins Ukraine’s grain export deal

CNN
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Russia Wed said he was joining the agreement that Ensures safe passage For ships carrying vital grain exports from Ukraine, a move that could help calm concerns about global food supplies that were raised when Moscow suspended its participation in the deal last week.

The Russian Defense Ministry announced the decision to reverse course and join the agreement a few days after Moscow was martyred in drone attacks on the city of Sevastopol in the occupation. Crimea As the reason for withdrawing from the deal.

“The Russian Federation considers that the guarantees it has received at the moment seem sufficient and will resume the implementation of the agreement,” the ministry said in a statement posted on its official channel Telegram.

Russia blamed Ukraine for the Sevastopol attacks. Ukraine has not confirmed that its forces attacked the city, and the extent of damage to Russian naval vessels remains unclear.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, after speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin, that the agreement will resume at noon today, Wednesday, Turkish time, according to the Turkish Anatolia News Agency.

Turkey, along with the United Nations, helped broker the deal in July.

The agreement established procedures to ensure the safety of ships carrying Ukrainian grain, fertilizer and other foodstuffs through a humanitarian corridor in the Black Sea. Under the agreement, all ships coming to and from the ports of Ukraine were checked and monitored by international teams made up of officials from Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the United Nations.

The US ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas Greenfield, told CNN she was “delighted” to revive the deal.

“[The deal] It provides the world with the necessary food, and it is clear that Russia was finally convinced that it needed to continue this, and it could not stand in the way of feeding the whole world,” she told CNN This Morning.

Ukraine plays a major role in the global food market, so Russia’s suspension of the deal has raised major concerns about global food supplies – at a time when the world is already facing a growing hunger crisis.

According to the United Nations, Ukraine usually supplies the world with about 45 million tons of grain every year. It is among the world’s top five exporters of barley, corn and wheat. It is also the largest exporter of sunflower oil, accounting for 46% of the world’s exports.

In normal times, Ukraine would export about three-quarters of the grain it produces. About 90% of these exports were previously shipped by sea from Ukraine’s ports on the Black Sea, according to European Commission data.

But when Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in late February, it effectively imposed a blockade on ships leaving Ukraine’s ports. The impact of the war on world food markets was imminent and very painful, especially since Ukraine is a major supplier of grain to the World Food Program. The Food and Agriculture Organization, a United Nations body, said up to 47 million people could be pushed into “acute food insecurity” due to the war.

Black Sea Deal Provided much needed relief. The United Nations estimates that the reduction in prices of basic foodstuffs as a result of the agreement has indirectly prevented some 100 million people from falling into extreme poverty.

It added that as of Monday, more than 9.5 million metric tons of foodstuffs had been exported under the deal since it came into force in the summer.