Russia said on Monday it would no longer guarantee the safety of ships passing through a Black Sea transit corridor as it announced its official withdrawal from a U.N.-brokered deal that had allowed Ukraine to export its grain surplus.
Moscow’s refusal to extend the Black Sea Grain Initiative agreed a year ago means the “withdrawal of navigation safety guarantees, curtailment of the maritime humanitarian corridor, [and] restoration of the regime of a temporarily dangerous area in the northwestern Black Sea,” the foreign ministry said in a statement posted on Telegram.
Some 33 million metric tons of Ukrainian grain and oilseeds have been shipped under the initiative over the last year, easing global food prices, but Russia claims the deal has not lived up to its “declared humanitarian goals.”
The Joint Coordination Center, set up to allow U.N., Turkish, Ukrainian and Russian officials to oversee the initiative’s implementation, will also be disbanded, Russia said.
“The export of Ukrainian food was almost immediately transferred to a purely commercial basis and until the last moment was directed to serving the selfish interests of Kiev and its Western curators,” said the Kremlin’s statement.
It also reiterated Moscow’s gripe that “hidden” Western sanctions were hindering its own food and fertilizer exports, despite a second agreement made last July under which the U.N. committed to facilitate the export of these products for a three-year period.
“As for the Russia-U.N. memorandum, it actually never came into effect. Washington, Brussels and London continued to ‘stamp’ their restrictions,” said the statement, adding that “only upon receipt of concrete results, and not promises and assurances , will Russia be ready to consider restoring the ‘deal.'”