U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Russia’s proposition to supply some very limited amount of grain to African countries “a drop in the bucket” that is “laughable,” despite the issue not being a laughing matter, in a discussion of the Black Sea Grain Initiative on the state website on Aug. 8.
“It’s — I — none of this is a laughing matter, but it’s laughable,” Blinken said.
“What Russia was proposing is — was to get grain to a half dozen countries, about 50,000 tons. The Black Sea Grain Initiative delivered 20 million tons to lower and middle-income countries.”
Every country in the world benefited from the grain deal as global food availability on world markets allowed prices to reduce, he said.
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“We’ve now seen, since Russia got out of the agreement, prices go up by 10 to 15 percent. That hurts everyone,” the State Secretary said.
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has claimed that Russia was ready to substitute Ukrainian grain both commercially and on a free basis, because so to say “record harvest” is expected this year in Russia. It makes no sense for Russia to extend the grain deal at current conditions, he said.
Russia’s withdrawal from the grain initiative: What is known
Russia officially announced the termination of the grain deal under the pretext of repeated attacks on the illegally built Crimea Bridge.
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Russia had been sabotaging the deal since April by refusing to carry out inspections, as was required under the deal, to create a backlog of unloaded ships.
Russia said it was unhappy with the conditions of the deal, and demanded that its state agricultural bank be allowed to use the SWIFT interbank transfer system again. The UN proposed that a U.S. bank or a specially created subsidiary bank be set up to allow payments on agricultural exports by Russia to be made, but the Kremlin refused to accept this compromise.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy then offered to extend the grain deal with the UN and Turkey, but without Russian participation.
The grain green corridor was mediated by the UN and Turkiye and had allowed Ukraine to export grain from three of its Black Sea ports starting from Aug. 1, 2022.
