MOSCOW, March 2. /TASS/. Russia has to state that the grain deal isn’t working as the West sabotages the execution of the Russian part of the agreements, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.
"We are forced to state that the package of agreements proposed by [UN Secretary-General Antonio] Guterres and signed in Istanbul on July 22, 2022 isn’t working. The main problem is the sabotage by Western countries of the implementation of the Russia-UN memorandum. It’s obvious that Americans and Europeans don’t care about the needs of countries in need, nor about the efforts of the UN, which they have long and persistently tried to turn into an obedient tool for serving their political goals," the ministry said.
The West needs to stop playing the food card on the international stage, spreading false information and burying the grain deal, the statement said.
"It’s time to stop playing the food card. The lion’s share of grain from Ukraine goes to the EU for animal feed at dumping prices, not to the poorest countries," the ministry said.
"Hurdles are openly raised for Russian agricultural exports, no matter how much the Europeans and the Americans, who are used to saying falsehoods, try to convince everybody of the opposite. The West is shamelessly burying the humanitarian ‘package’ of the UN secretary general," the statement said.
West is "shamelessly" silent about the fact that "Kiev continues, out of purely political motives, to block the resumption of the work of the ammonia pipeline from Togliatti to Odessa," the ministry said.
Russia reminded that these provisions are part of the grain deal and ammonia supplies "could have started at the same time as the export of Ukrainian food."
Moscow said it’s seeing a "stubborn reluctance" of the West to recognize the Russian part of the deal, while UN efforts to make sure it’s honored don’t yield any results. The ministry said 262,000 tons of fertilizers that Russia wanted to donate to the poorest countries had been stranded in the ports of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and the Netherlands.
Kiev and Washington have recently been promoting the idea that the grain deal must be expanded in terms of time and volume, according to the statement.
"In practice, however, eight months after the deal was concluded, just one part of the package is being executed: The one to export Ukrainian food. And it’s executed within the parameters that are a far cry from the stated humanitarian purposes," the ministry said.