ANKARA, January 26. /TASS/. There is no point in talking about UN-sponsored Russian agricultural and fertilizer exports to African nations, Russian Ambassador to Turkey Alexey Erkhov said on Thursday, citing the first batch of Russian fertilizers to Africa from the Netherlands on November 28 last year as an example.
"The first and only batch of Russian fertilizers, totaling 20,000 tons, was delivered to Mozambique in December of last year and now it should be on its way to Malawi. Almost five months have passed since the shipment of just one and a small batch of free fertilizers under the auspices of the UN, but the cargo has still not reached the recipient. We cannot even imagine how long it would take to unblock the remaining 242,000 tons of produce. If implementing this entirely humanitarian endeavor is met with such dilemmas and hurdles, then it would be impossible to talk about normalizing the exports of our agricultural products and fertilizers with the assistance of the UN," the Russian ambassador wrote on the diplomatic mission’s Telegram channel.
Earlier, a representative of the management of the Mozambique port of Beira stated that the first shipment of Russian fertilizers for Africa, destined for Malawi, began unloading at the port on January 23. The freight volume of the shipment reached around 20,000 metric tons.
On January 16, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin talked over phone about free delivery of Russian agricultural supplies and fertilizers to African countries in need.