According to International news, on Tuesday 25th April, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov renewed threats of abandoning the Black Sea Grain Initiative, an agreement that allows the safe wartime export of agricultural products from besieged Ukrainian ports.
As Lavrov said in reporters at the U.N, one of Moscow’s demands is for the Russian Agricultural Bank, or Rosselkhozbank, to return to the SWIFT banking system. Two days after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the U.S., European allies and Canada moved to block key Russian banks from the interbank messaging system, SWIFT.
Moscow’s exclusion from SWIFT, which stands for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, severed the country from much of the global financial system.
It was not called the grain deal it was called the Black Sea Initiative and in the text itself the agreement stated that this applies to the expansion of opportunities to export grain and fertilizer. That’s not the deal we agreed to on July 22.
…Lavrov told reporters during a press conference.
Lavrov said there are dozens of Russian cargo vessels carrying some 200,000 tons of fertilizer stuck at European ports.
As explained, before Russian troops poured over Ukraine’s borders last February, Ukraine and Russia accounted for almost a quarter of global grain exports. Those shipments came to a severe halt for nearly six months until representatives from Ukraine, Russia, the U.N. and Turkey agreed to establish a humanitarian sea corridor.
In conclusion, since then, more than 900 ships carrying nearly 29 million metric tons of agricultural products have departed from Ukraine’s war-weary ports.
