ROME, July 27. /TASS/. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has reaffirmed his commitment to implementing the memorandum with Russia, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin said following a meeting with the UN chief on the sidelines of the UN Food Systems Summit that wrapped up in the Italian capital on Wednesday.
"We find it important that the UN chief reaffirmed his commitment to the implementation of the memorandum with Russia. We appreciate the UN team’s efforts, but we reiterate that specific results are needed [for a resumption of the Black Sea initiative]," Vershinin insisted.
The senior Russian diplomat recalled that the year-long debate about the ammonia pipeline had been closed amid terrorist activity by Ukraine which blew it up. Moscow suspects that the UN Secretariat has been deliberately avoiding an assessment of what happened.
Vershinin said he had discussed the Black Sea initiative with Guterres as he had given the UN chief a detailed presentation of Russian assessments of the implementation of agreements reached a year ago in Istanbul. Despite all efforts, the second part of the package of Istanbul agreements, namely the Russia-UN memorandum, was never implemented, he lamented. Barriers still remain to Russian agricultural exports to the global market. Fertilizer deliveries that are as important for African nations are affected, too, the Russian diplomat said.
Now, "these efforts must be supported with specific results," Vershinin maintained. Russia expects tangible results, without giving any timeframes, he added.
The grain deal expired on July 17. In exiting from the deal, Moscow, which had agreed to extensions of the July 2022 Istanbul agreements creating the Black Sea corridor for ships carrying Ukrainian grain several times, cited the failure of its deal partners to fulfil the Russia-related provisions of the deal, which called for removing obstacles to Russian agricultural exports. Moscow also noted that, although the Istanbul agreements were intended to ensure food security for the neediest countries, the bulk of Ukraine’s grain actually went to wealthy Western countries. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow could consider resuming the grain deal if all of the Russia-related provisions are in fact implemented.
In a recent article, Russian President Vladimir Putin wrote that Moscow was ready to replace Ukrainian grain supplies both on a commercial and free basis. In particular, Moscow is ready to supply grain to needy countries for free on a bilateral basis.