UNITED NATIONS, April 25. /TASS/. The content of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ message on the grain deal has yet to be reported to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the country's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday.
"Indeed, Antonio Guterres handed a message for President Putin yesterday. It will be reported, and the reaction will be announced," he told a press conference following a visit to New York as part of Moscow's presidency of the UN Security Council.
"This is a message, after all, not to the general public, but to our president. And as far as I understand, similar messages have been sent to the Ukrainians and to Turkey. The response to this message will come once the addressee is made aware of it," he told a press conference following a visit to New York as part of Moscow's presidency in the UN Security Council.
A possible leak of the content of the United Nations secretary general’s letter to the Russian president on the grain deal will indicate an attempt to exert pressure on Russia, Lavrov said.
"As for the letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, which was handed over by the UN secretary general yesterday, I hope it has not been leaked because it is personal correspondence between the UN chief and the leader of a UN member country," he told.
"If this paper is made public, it will not be very decent. It will indicate another attempt at exerting pressure on the situation that is not being resolved and that has been driven to a dead end by our Western colleagues," he said.
The top Russian diplomat recalled that initially the Black Sea initiative envisaged exporting grain and ammonia. "No one has talked about ammonia until yesterday, although [UN Secretary General] Antonio Guterres told me yesterday that there is critical shortage of fertilizers, first of all of the ammonia group, on the global market. No one has ever thought about that until now," he stated.
According to Lavrov, there are many questions about how "this deal has turned from the Black Sea Initiative into the Black Sea Grain Initiative and has become a commercial undertaking instead of a humanitarian initiative." He also drew attention to the Ukrainian colleagues’ unfair attempts to derive profit and create artificial obstacles for ships during inspections before entering the Black Sea straits.
"We drew attention to the fact that while focusing only on the Ukrainian part of the deal, out UN colleagues forget that Antonio Guterres initially proposed an interlinked package," he said. "The memorandum provides for the UN secretary general and his employees’ obligations to do their best to remove obstacles on the path of exports of Russian fertilizers and Russian grain. I wouldn’t say that the United Nations is making no effort. On the contrary, both Antonio Guterres and the secretary general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs are trying to reach an agreement with the countries which have imposed illegal unilateral sanctions against Russia. But there is practically no result.".
Earlier, the UN Secretary-General gave Lavrov a letter addressed to the Russian President that included ideas about how to implement the grain deal, with similar letters being sent to Ukraine and Turkey.
Agreements on the export of food from Ukraine were concluded on July 22, 2022, for 120 days and extended in November for the same period. One of the agreements regulates the order of grain supplies from the Kiev-controlled ports of Odessa, Chernomorsk and Yuzhny. Moreover, a memorandum was inked by Russia and the UN on lifting export restrictions for Russian agricultural products and fertilizers to global markets. Moscow notes that the second part of the agreement is not being implemented. On March 18, Russia announced that the deal was being extended for 60 days, warning that this would be enough time to assess the efficacy of the memorandum signed with the UN.