Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the United Nations (UN) announced on Saturday the extension of the international agreement on the export of Ukrainian cereals, concluded in July 2022 to temper the world food crisis born from the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
kyiv immediately welcomed this extension, saying that it had been negotiated for a period of 120 days. Neither the Turkish president nor the UN, however, gave details on the duration of the extension, which has not yet been confirmed by Russia.
“Following talks with both parties [l’Ukraine et la Russie]we ensured the extension of the agreement which was to end on March 19,” Erdogan said in a televised speech.
Ankara previously said it hoped for a 120-day extension while Russia insisted on 60 days.
“The Black Sea Grain Initiative, signed in Istanbul on July 22, 2022, has been extended. (…) We express our gratitude to the government of Turkey for the diplomatic and operational support,” the spokesman for the UN Secretary General, Stéphane Dujarric, said in a statement.
Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov, for his part, mentioned a 120-day extension.
“The Black Sea Grain Initiative is extended for 120 days. We thank Antonio Guterres, the United Nations, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, (Turkish Defense Minister) Hulusi Akar and all our partners for confirming this agreement,” he said on Twitter.
“The main challenge is to speed up ship inspections in Turkey. This will allow the world to get even more Ukrainian agricultural products. We also continue to work on adding ports in the Mykolaiv region to the Grain Initiative and expanding the range of goods,” he added in a post shared on Facebook.
“This agreement is of vital importance for the global food supply. I thank Russia and Ukraine, who have spared no effort for a new extension of the agreement, as well as the Secretary General of the United Nations”, affirmed Mr. Erdogan.
Moscow’s opposition
Moscow has accepted an extension of the agreement on the export of Ukrainian grain for only 60 days and not 120 as indicated by Kiev, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.
“We see statements from different parties that the ‘grain agreement’ has been extended by 120 days,” said Maria Zakharova, quoted by the Russian agency Interfax. “We have repeated several times that (…) the Russian side has informed all the stakeholders that the agreement has been extended for 60 days”.
The Black Sea Grain Initiative signed in July 2022 by Ukraine, Russia and Turkey, with the help of the UN, has alleviated the global food crisis caused by the war in Ukraine by allowing the export of almost 25 million tonnes of corn, wheat and other cereals.
According to its terms, the agreement was to be “automatically extended for the same period [120 jours] unless one of the parties notifies the other of its intention to terminate or modify it”.
But on March 13, Russia, unhappy with the application of a second agreement to facilitate its own fertilizer exports, had indicated that it only accepted a 60-day extension.
Theoretically, fertilizer exports, essential for world agriculture, do not fall under the sanctions imposed on Moscow by Western countries since the start of the war, but they are de facto blocked.
Moscow wants tangible progress on bank payments, transport logistics, insurance, unfreezing financial activities and ammonia supply through the “Togliatti-Odessa” pipeline.
The UN has said it will do all it can to save the grain mechanism that has helped assuage soaring prices since the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Turkey, which hosts the joint coordination center of the agreement organizing the control of ships, had indicated Friday that it still hoped for an extension of 120 days.