MOSCOW, August 4. /TASS/. Ukraine will not receive $2 bln in foreign currency this year as a result of Russia withdrawing from the grain deal, according to the estimate by Vladimir Lepushinsky, director of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Monetary Policy and Economic Analysis Department.

"As for the grain corridor, this (the termination of Russia’s participation - TASS) will impact the rate of grain exports. That is, what is not exported this year, will be exported in the next one. And this year, foreign currency earnings will be $2 bln less by our estimates," Ukraine’s Ekonomicheskaya Pravda quoted him as saying.

Earlier, Alexey Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said that Ukraine would continue to dispatch its vessels carrying grain across the Black Sea despite Russia’s withdrawal from the deal.

The Black Sea grain deal ceased to function on July 17. After agreeing several times since the inception of the grain deal in July 2022 to extend the agreement to provide a shipping corridor across the Black Sea for vessels carrying Ukrainian grain, Moscow reiterated that the Russia-related provisions of the accords on the removal of obstacles to agricultural exports were never implemented. Russia also highlighted the fact that, although the agreements were intended to direct food supplies to the poorest countries, the bulk of Ukrainian grain had gone to wealthy Western countries. The Kremlin said that the Russian side would consider resurrecting the grain initiative as soon as its conditions were met.

On July 19, the Russian Defense Ministry said that, due to the termination of the grain deal, Moscow would deem all vessels traversing the Black Sea bound for Ukrainian ports to be carriers of military cargo, effective 12:00 a.m. Moscow time on July 20. It specified that the flag states of such vessels would in turn be deemed as parties to the Ukrainian conflict on the side of the Kiev regime. The ministry also declared certain areas in international waters in the northwestern and southeastern Black Sea to be temporarily dangerous for navigation.