5 main demands.. Putin: “We will return to the grain agreement if our conditions are met.”
After Moscow withdrew, last Monday, from the agreement that allowed Ukraine a year ago to export grain from its ports on the Black Sea, despite the war, in order to alleviate the global food crisis, he returned Russian President Vladimir Putin He made accusations against Western countries.
The master of the Kremlin confirmed that those countries distorted the grain agreement in the Black Sea to achieve their own interests, explaining that a parallel memorandum of understanding signed at the same time to facilitate Russian exports of grain and fertilizers in the face of Western sanctions imposed on Moscow in response to the invasion of Ukraine was ignored, according to Reuters.
“Meet the conditions first.”
Nevertheless, Putin announced his country’s readiness to return immediately if all its conditions are met.
He also pointed out that the essence and meaning of the grain agreement had enormous human importance, and the West completely weakened this essence and its craft, and instead of truly helping countries in need, the West used the grain agreement for political blackmail, and in addition to that made it a tool to enrich transnational companies and speculators in the global grain market, as he put it.
After Russia’s withdrawal from the grain agreement, global wheat prices rose
Putin confirmed Moscow’s position that it would return to the deal once the West met its five main demands, which are the return of the Russian Agricultural Bank to the Swift system, the resumption of the export of agricultural machinery and spare parts to Russia, the removal of restrictions on insurance and the arrival of Russian ships and goods to ports, the restoration of the currently damaged ammonia export pipeline from Russia’s Togliatti to Odessa in Ukraine, and the abolition of the ban on the accounts and financial activities of Russian fertilizer companies.
He said, “If all these conditions that we agreed on before are met, I did not make them up now, as soon as they are met, we will immediately return to the agreement.”
3 months
It is noteworthy that the Russian Ministry of Defense had announced, after the end of the grain export agreement on Monday, that Moscow would consider all ships heading to Ukrainian ports as potential carriers of military shipments.
The Russian Foreign Ministry gave the United Nations, which mediated the grain agreement alongside Turkey, 3 months to implement the terms of the memorandum if it wanted Russia to return to the grain agreement.
