JOHANNESBURG /South Africa/, August 24. /TASS/. Russia sees no signs that the West is ready to comply with Moscow's conditions for returning to the grain deal, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters.

"So far, we see no such signs," he said, answering a relevant question.

"The West only calls on us to support the same old UN proposals, in particular those put forward in May, early July, [and these proposals] were as follows: do not withdraw your consent to the Ukrainian part of the package, let everything go as it went, we’ll add a couple of ports, the number of inspections, so that this volume increases constantly. If you do this, then we can talk about reconnecting your Russian Agricultural Bank to the SWIFT system in about three months, and we will also start talking to insurance companies and convince them not to raise rates; we will negotiate so that ships can enter some ports," Lavrov recalled.

"Of course, we can’t accept any of this, because we have been fed promises on this particular topic for a whole year," the minister said.

However, he added that he plans to meet with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres so the two can discuss issues related to the grain deal.

Lavrov also recalled the situation with blocked Russian fertilizers in EU ports, most of which have still not been transported to countries in need.

"The company that owns these fertilizers has already announced that we are giving them away for free to developing countries, President [of the Russian Federation Vladimir] Putin publicly called on the EU to unblock these fertilizers, which are very important for Africans, which we are ready to deliver free of charge, even at our own expense," he said.

"In the more than one year since we announced this, the first batch of 20,000 tons out of 260,000 tons, with great difficulty (it took five months to approve it) was sent to the country of Malawi, and it took another three months to send 34,000 tons to Kenya. The remaining 200,000-odd tons are idling away, something that is not very good for the quality of fertilizers, when they are dead weight in ports. A similar deal for Nigeria is being slowed down for reasons unknown to us. That's what the promises of the West are worth, even when you give something for free, just to give it to the countries in need," the Russian Foreign Minister added.

Summing everything up, Lavrov said that Russia is ready to resume the package grain deal "the very day and hour" the West fulfills its promises.