Invasion of Ukraine: With renewed ‘grain deal’ Russia tries a face-saver
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: After relentlessly bombing Ukraine for nearly 18 months, with no signs of victory or even a ceasefire, Russia now seems to be trying to save its face, increasingly isolated as the former superpower finds itself in the international arena and dependent on an unreliable China and even North Korea.
That is why Russian President Vladimir Putin, who cannot visit over 40 countries fearing arrest, is trying to renew the Ukraine grain deal. “Russia is open to talks on the Ukraine grain deal,” the media quoted him as saying on Monday.
This happened when Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan met Putin in Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi on Monday, to persuade him to return to a Ukraine grain export deal that helped ease a global food crisis.
Russia quit the deal in July – a year after it was brokered by the United Nations and Turkey – complaining that its own food and fertilizer exports faced obstacles and that not enough Ukrainian grain was going to countries in need.
President Putin told Erdogan they would discuss the Ukraine crisis and that Moscow was open to discussions on the grain deal. Earlier, Erdogan had played a significant role in convincing Putin to stick with the deal.
“We are cautious, but we hope to achieve success,” Erdogan’s chief foreign policy and security advisor Akif Cagatay Kilic was quoted as saying.
The grain deal was aimed at getting grain from Ukraine to world markets through the Black Sea and easing a global food crisis that the United Nations said had been worsened by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year. Russia still claims it was not war but merely a “special military operation” against Ukraine to prevent it from joining the US-led NATO.
Russia and Ukraine have been two of the world’s key agricultural producers, and major players in the wheat, barley, maize, rapeseed, rapeseed oil, sunflower seed, and sunflower oil markets.
Putin said Russia could return to the grain deal if the West fulfills a separate memorandum agreed with the UN at the same time to facilitate Russian food and fertilizer exports.
While Russian exports of food and fertilizer are not subject to Western sanctions imposed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moscow said restrictions on payments, logistics, and insurance have hindered shipments.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday last week that he had sent Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov “a set of concrete proposals” aimed at reviving the grain deal.
One of Moscow’s main demands is for the Russian Agricultural Bank to be reconnected to the SWIFT international payments system. The European Union had cut it off in June 2022 as part of sweeping sanctions imposed in response to the invasion, plunging the Russian economy into a mess.
Russia has blockaded Ukrainian Black Sea ports since it invaded its neighbor in February 2022 and threatened to treat all vessels as potential military targets after pulling out of the UN-backed deal, which allowed Ukraine to export tens of millions of metric tons of produce.
In response, Ukraine announced a “humanitarian corridor” hugging the western Black Sea coast near Romania and Bulgaria. On Sunday a third vessel, the Liberia-flagged Anna-Theresa, exited the Black Sea via Istanbul through the corridor.
Russia is also discussing a Putin initiative to supply up to 1 million tons of Russian grain to Turkey at reduced prices for subsequent processing at Turkish plants and shipping to countries most in need.
