In an interview with the Izvestia daily, Russia’s deputy foreign minister said that Russia doesn’t want to stop global food security efforts. This was a sign that a deal allowing Ukraine to export grain through the Black Sea could be continued without any problems, according to Reuters.
The deal is set to continue unless there are objections by November 19. Moscow has said that its agreement depends on making sure it can still export its own grain and fertiliser even though Western sanctions are making it hard to do so.
“We are people for whom the human side of the issue is not just a word,” Sergei Vershinin was quoted as saying in an interview that came out early on Wednesday and was published by Izvestia.
Both Ukraine and Russia send a lot of grain around the world. Russia is the biggest exporter of wheat in the world and a major supplier of crop and soil nutrients to markets around the world.
If what the West says about letting Russia’s food exports out of sanctions is true, “everything would go on as usual” with the Black Sea grain deal, he said.
When asked if Russia would back Turkey’s recent plan to take a time limit out of the deal, he said that the current 120-day time limit seems “justified.”
Vershinin also said that the state bank Rosselkhozbank, which has been a big part of Russia’s demands in this area, was ready to provide guarantees for dealing with food and fertiliser transactions if its access to the international SWIFT bank payments system was restored, Izvestia reported.
