MOSCOW, September 6. /TASS/. Ukraine owns an insignificant share of the global wheat export market, and this number continues to diminish, so the "global breadbasket" moniker given to it by the West and the UN is greatly exaggerated, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
"The role of Ukraine as a world breadbasket has been greatly exaggerated, at the behest of the same Westerners and the United Nations. The share of this country in the total export of wheat was already small (5%), and is getting objectively smaller given, among other things, the reduction in crop land due to the radioactive and chemical contamination of soil as a result of using munitions with depleted uranium supplied by the West. That said, the Ukrainians also have other (besides the Black Sea) opportunities to move their cargo, via land and river routes to the EU, along the so-called solidarity corridors," the diplomatic agency said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry reiterated that transporting cargo via these corridors is more expensive while the Europeans are "in no rush to display their proclaimed solidarity with Kiev" by introducing various import bans. "On September 15, when the next moratorium expires, Brussels will have a wonderful opportunity to review its own decision and lift the ban on importing Ukrainian grain which risks completely flooding the markets of Eastern European countries. There will also be an opportunity to ship grain from Ukraine to needy countries in Africa and Latin America seeing as how Washington and certain European capitals are so concerned about it. However, somehow this is not believable at all," the statement noted.
The foreign policy agency also noted that "no catastrophe" occurred on the global food market after the suspension of the Black Sea Grain Initiative as grain prices are steadily falling.
"Overall, there is no global food deficit - there are problems with its distribution but not with production. In other words, nobody died of hunger because seaborne exports of Ukrainian grain were halted, and no food crisis broke out as Western capitals and the UN predicted. Which is not surprising because it is hard to feed mankind with 32.8 mln tons of mostly fodder corn and grain.
The Black Sea grain deal ceased to function on July 17. After agreeing several times since the inception of the grain deal in July 2022 to extend the agreement to provide a shipping corridor across the Black Sea for vessels carrying Ukrainian grain, Moscow reiterated that the Russia-related provisions of the accords on the removal of obstacles to agricultural exports were never implemented. Speaking at a press conference in Sochi on September 4 after talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Russian leader Vladimir Putin said that Moscow was ready to return to the grain deal in a matter of days after promises given to it under the deal were fulfilled.