Russia said on Saturday it stood by its conditions for returning to the Black Sea grain deal, which it abandoned in July.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia needs its state agricultural bank – and not a bank subsidiary, as the United Nations proposed – to reconnect to the SWIFT international banking payments system.
“All our conditions are perfectly known. They do not need interpretation, they are absolutely concrete and all this is absolutely achievable,” Peskov said.
“Therefore, Russia maintains its responsible, clear and consistent position, which has been repeatedly expressed by the president.”
The Black Sea agreement was negotiated by Turkey and the United Nations in July 2022 to allow Ukraine to export grain by sea despite the war and help alleviate a global food crisis.
It was accompanied by an agreement to facilitate Russia’s own exports of food and fertilizer, which Moscow says has not been fulfilled. Since abandoning the grain deal, Russia has repeatedly bombed Ukrainian ports and warehouses, prompting Kiev and the West to accuse it of using food as a weapon.
Moscow’s reaffirmation of its position comes five days after President Vladimir Putin met with Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan and discussed the grain issue.
Russia appears to have been encouraged by Erdogan’s statement at that meeting that Ukraine should “soften its approach” in talks on reviving the deal, and export more grain to Africa rather than Europe. Ukraine stated that it would not change its position and that it would not be held hostage to “Russian blackmail.”
Russia says its grain and fertilizer exports, while not specifically sanctioned by the West, face obstacles in practice due to restrictions affecting access to ports, insurance, logistics and payments, including the withdrawal of the agricultural bank Rosselkhozbank from SWIFT.
The UN has proposed that a Rosselkhozbank subsidiary based in Luxembourg could immediately request SWIFT to “effectively allow access” to the bank within 30 days.
“The agreements say that SWIFT must be open to Rosselkhozbank, and not to its subsidiary. That is, we are talking about the need to return to the basics, to the agreements that existed in the beginning and that we were promised would be fulfilled,” Peskov said.
“The president clearly said that as soon as they were met, the agreement would be immediately resumed. But not the other way around,” he added. (Report from Reuters. Edited in Spanish by Javier López de Lérida)
Source: Ambito
