ST. PETERSBURG, June 16. /TASS/. Russia sees no benefits in being a party to the Black Sea grain deal, but will continue to fulfill its humanitarian mission of exporting foodstuffs to foreign markets, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Viktoria Abramchenko has told TASS in an interview.
"We see that this grain deal does not entail any benefits for Russia. But, at the same time, we are fulfilling all our obligations. We realize that the extra foodstuffs that we have, the ones that we can sell globally, are much-needed by our partners - friendly countries, developing countries and major countries. That is why we will, of course, continue fulfilling our humanitarian part of the mission to supply food," she added.
The deputy premier reiterated that the deal consisted of two parts. The first one, aimed at ensuring unimpeded transportation of agricultural products from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, is being implemented in full. However, none of the provisions from the second part, which includes reconnecting Russia’s Rosselkhozbank to SWIFT and removing all logistical and insurance barriers for Russian agricultural exports, has been put into practice so far.
"There were promises, the negotiation process was proceeding quite actively, but, regrettably, without any results," she said.
"The president has already spoken about prospects of the grain deal. And he was very concise in his description of what other countries did. They deceived us, once again," Abramchenko added.