BRUSSELS, May 31. /TASS/. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz asserts that only Russia is to blame for the current global food crisis. He expressed this opinion at a press conference following an extraordinary EU summit on Tuesday.
"The responsibility for threats that we encounter is borne unequivocally by Russia and its president," the chancellor said commenting on the situation with food. He insisted that EU leaders are concerned over difficulties with supplying food products and think that they are caused by Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. "This is why it is so important now to activate efforts on exporting grain from Ukraine," he stated, adding that UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is discussing the settlement of this issue with all important players.
"Naturally, this also involves the discussion of the issue of export of fertilizers," he added.
As Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said earlier, the global food crisis started long before the special military operation in Ukraine, caused, among others, by the pandemic and miscalculations by Western countries. He added that the current situation had exacerbated the problem while Western sanctions became one of the key reasons of disruptions in food supply chains which aggravated the crisis.
Earlier, the Wall Street Journal reported that Guterres was holding talks with Russia and Ukraine on unblocking Ukrainian grain exports via the Black Sea in exchange for lifting some sanctions blocking the export of Russian fertilizers. Information that the discussion was underway to renew the supplies of Ukrainian grain and Russian fertilizes to global markets was confirmed by Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya and US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield. However, the parties insist that these issues are being discussed separately and there is no talk of any exchange.