BUDAPEST, June 23. /TASS/. Hungary has put forward a proposal to expand the Black Sea grain transportation deal by adding more sea routes to it, Hungarian Agriculture Minister Istvan Nagy said after talks with his Polish counterpart Robert Telus.

A statement, published on the ministry’s website, says Warsaw supported Budapest’s initiative. Therefore, Nagy requested his colleague to "give him the mandate for negotiating with Turky [on behalf of both Hungary and Poland] on opening new grain transportation sea routes to complement the existing ones running from three Black Sea ports."

Nagy and Telus "agreed to organize a joint meeting with Ukraine’s Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food Nikolay Solsky to jointly search for a solution to the grain import problem."

Hungary and Poland’s interest in this issue is due to the fact that these countries are used as major transit hubs for Ukrainian agricultural products transported by land. A bulk of these deliveries fails to reach the intended destination and ends up on Central European markets, where it is sold at dumping prices, damaging domestic agriculture.

Nagy believes that ‘solidarity lanes’ - ground-based routes to transport Ukrainian grain via Central Europe - "have been unable to fulfill their intended goal, because these products do not go beyond the countries that neighbor Ukraine."

Therefore, the minister suggests "expanding the traditional maritime routes that are currently being used for transporting just 12% of all Ukrainian foodstuffs."

"It will help to reduce the burden on land routes and to ease pressure on domestic EU markets," the Hungarian agriculture ministry added.

Agreements on export of food and fertilizers from Ukraine to the international market 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. The second part stipulates unfreezing of Russian export of food and fertilizers, connection of Rosselkhozbank back to SWIFT, resumption of supplies of agriculture equipment, components and service maintenance, resumption of the work of Togliatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline and a number of other steps. This part of the package agreement has not yet been implemented as stated by Moscow. On March 18, 2023, Russia announced that the deal was extended for 60 days, warning that this would be enough time to assess the efficacy of the memorandum signed with the UN. On May 18, the grain deal was extended for another two months, until July 17.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said earlier this week that the extension of the grain deal was out of the question unless the Russian package of Istanbul agreements was enforced, adding that the deal was still being implemented only regarding the supply of Ukrainian grain.