MOSCOW, July 13. /TASS/. Many European countries have begun to reject Ukrainian grain, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on the air of the Rossiya-24 TV channel.
"I have already said many times: of the total volume of food exported from the territory of Ukraine, primarily grain, only three and a half percent went to the poorest countries. Everything else went to well-fed and prosperous Europe. But many European countries began to abandon Ukrainian grain; they started to reject Ukrainian grain, not us," he said.
West’s miscalculations
The Russian President stressed that the deal was originally grounded by the UN and its Secretary General Antonio Guterres as an agreement aimed primarily at helping the world's poorest countries to prevent starvation there.
"I want to emphasize once again that the rise in prices for food products, for what is produced by the world’s agriculture, for fertilizers is not linked with the special military operation, it is due to the mistakes of the leading Western economies in finance and investment, including in the energy sector," he added.
"For many, many years, the basic principles of energy development have been neglected; they have been carried away by alternative energy sources. They have not paid due attention to investments in the oil and gas sector, some countries have abandoned nuclear energy. The result is the opposite of what was expected in the energy sector," Putin said.
"All prices went up. Investments were not made in a timely manner, which created shortages there. Now there is none [shortage], but in general, the threat of these shortages has occurred due to the fact that there is no investment in the industry," the head of state stressed.
Putin also drew attention to the behavior of the West in the economy during the pandemic. "In the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, [Western countries] began to support both citizens and certain sectors of the economy. We also did this, but on a reasonable scale. But they didn’t: they printed a huge amount of money, they began to shovel food from the world market to their countries and put the poorest countries in a very difficult position," the Russian President said.
Putin pointed out that Western sanctions against Russia have exacerbated the situation on the global food and energy markets. "In connection with the start of the special military operation, they decided to blame everything on Russia. <…> We have absolutely nothing to do with it.
Yes, of course, the use of sanctions as an instrument of competition. Using these instruments of sanctions policy aggravated the situation on the world food and energy markets. But it is not us who have exacerbated it, but they, by their actions, who have led to this result," he said.