Moscow’s decision to quit the grain deal also means termination of Russia’s commitments on the Memorandum of Understanding with the United Nations to the agreement, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Monday.
“With the decision to terminate the Black Sea Initiative, the Russian Federation also terminated its commitment to ‘facilitate the unimpeded export of food, sunflower oil, and fertilizers from Ukrainian controlled Black Sea Ports’ – as expressed in Paragraph 1 of the Memorandum of Understanding between the Russian Federation and the United Nations,” he noted.
Meanwhile, “since the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding, and also taking into account the measures adopted by the Russian Federation, Russian grain trade has reached high export volumes and fertilizer markets are stabilizing with Russian exports nearing full recovery, as stated by the Russian Union of Grain Exporters and Russian Fertilizer Producers Association,” UN Secretary-General said, adding that he also underlined it in a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“My letter also mentioned that: ‘the Russian Federation has highlighted the issue of access to SWIFT by the Russian Agricultural Bank as a key factor influencing its decisions. On this front, the United Nations recently brokered a concrete proposal to enable a subsidiary of the Russian Agricultural Bank to regain access to SWIFT with the European Commission,” Guterres said. “The letter went on to detail how: ‘We have built a bespoke payments mechanism for the Russian Agricultural Bank through JP Morgan outside of SWIFT’,” he added.
