Putin Russia can replace grain shipments from Ukraine

Putin: Russia can replace grain shipments from Ukraine

A few days after Moscow broke the grain deal, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia was ready to replace Ukrainian grain supplies. “I want to ensure that our country is able to replace Ukrainian grain commercially and free of charge, especially as we expect another bountiful harvest this year,” Putin said.

This is what the president of Russia wrote in an article for the African media published on the Kremlin website on Monday night on the occasion of the upcoming Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, starting on Thursday.

Despite sanctions imposed by the West, Russia will continue to work “vigorously” to supply African countries with grain, food, fertilizer and more, he said. In 2022, Russia exported 11.5 million tons of grain to Africa, almost 10 million tons in the first six months of this year. “And this despite sanctions introduced against our exports, which actually make it significantly more difficult for Russian food to be exported to developing countries,” continued Putin.

Regarding the grain deal blocked by Moscow, which allowed Ukrainian grain to be exported through the Black Sea for about a year, Putin wrote that the export corridor had lost its humanitarian importance. Of the nearly 33 million tons of grain exported under the agreement, most went to high- and upper-middle-income countries. In reality, the grain business was “brazenly used exclusively to enrich large American and European companies that exported and resold grain from Ukraine,” Putin said.

Russia, which has been waging a war of aggression against the neighboring country since February 2022, allowed the international grain deal to expire a week ago, despite many international appeals. The United Nations has repeatedly campaigned for the deal to be reinstated, and China has also urged both sides to quickly resume exports. It is feared that hunger in the poorest countries will become even greater.