UNITED NATIONS, April 24. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said following a meeting with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday that he received a letter from the top UN official with ideas for a full implementation of the grain deal.

"The meeting with the UN secretary-general has ended. It lasted more than an hour. We considered all the issues that are currently on the UN agenda, Antonio Guterres paid special attention to the prospects for the further implementation of the so-called Black Sea initiative in the context of his own proposal, which was submitted last year and approved on July 22, 2022 and which, as he himself emphasized, is of a package nature. It’s about assisting the export of Ukrainian grain from Ukrainian ports and a similar obligation to the Russian Federation in terms of removing the obstacles created by Western countries - the Americans, the European Union, the UK - for the export of our grain, primarily wheat, and fertilizers," he said.

"The secretary-general spoke about the efforts he is making to move forward with the Russian part of the deal as much as possible. So far, the progress, frankly, is not very noticeable. He communicated his thoughts to us in a letter that outlines ideas on how to proceed. Of course, the letter needs to be studied. So far, as I have already said, and I honestly mentioned this to Antonio Guterres, we do not see the desire of Western countries to truly accomplish what is necessary for the successful implementation of the secretary-general's initiative on a package approach to the export of agricultural products from Ukraine and the Russian Federation," Lavrov said. "But I will say it again: We will study his ideas that were communicated to us on paper."

A package of agreements to export food and fertilizers was signed on July 22, 2022 in Istanbul. One portion of the agreements sets forth a procedure for the export of grain from the Kiev-controlled ports of Odessa, Chernomorsk and Yuzhny. The other portion concerns the access of Russian food to the world market. Moscow has said many times that the second portion of the agreements has in effect not been fulfilled. The agreements were originally signed for 120 days and were extended for the same period in November. Russia announced on March 18 that the deal was extended for another 60 days, warning that this would be ample time to evaluate the execution of the memorandum that had been signed with the UN.