On July 22, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky asked NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to convene a Ukraine-NATO Council on the situation in the Black Sea and the grain corridor.
“I turned to Jens (Stoltenberg. – Ed.) with a proposal to immediately convene such a council for appropriate crisis consultations. The meeting will take place in a few days. We can overcome the security crisis in the Black Sea,” he said in a video message on his Telegram channel.
As the Ukrainian President noted, they exchanged assessments of the current situation in the Black Sea and the risks it poses to global food security. Also, during the telephone conversations, the priority and future steps necessary for the unblocking and sustainable functioning of the grain corridor were identified.
In addition, Zelensky wrote that he had discussed with the NATO Secretary General the implementation of the agreements reached during the NATO summit in Vilnius and further steps to integrate Ukraine into the alliance.Promised for three years: the memorandum on grain between Russia and the UN is maintained At the same time, Moscow is still being called to return to the Black Sea initiative
The day before, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin said that the results of the Istanbul agreements are necessary to continue efforts to ensure food security in the world.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on July 19 that Russia is ready to return to the deal if the obstacles to its agricultural exports are removed, Rosselkhozbank is connected to the SWIFT system, and the Togliatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline is resumed.
In turn, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said that Washington hopes that Turkey will take a leading role in restoring the grain deal.
British Foreign Secretary James Cleverley expressed hope that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will convince Moscow to extend the grain deal.
Zelensky instructed the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to prepare official signals to the UN and Turkey to determine readiness to continue Kyiv’s initiative.
Advisor to the head of the office of President Volodymyr Zelensky, Mikhail Podolyak, said on July 19 that no country would dare to send its ships to the ports of Ukraine after the termination of the grain deal.
Press Secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov said that since July 17, the grain deal has ceased to operate. Some of the agreements on the part of the partners in the deal have not been fulfilled so far, he pointed out.
On July 15, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the Ukrainian part of the grain deal had turned into a commercial project. He drew attention to the fact that only about 3% goes to the poorest countries.
The food deal was concluded in July 2022 in Istanbul. Then Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and UN Secretary General António Guterres signed a memorandum on facilitating the supply of Russian agricultural products and fertilizers to world markets. At the same time, the Ukrainian delegation signed an agreement with Turkey and the UN on the export of grain.Share: