Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan during a meeting in Sochi, Russia, on September 4, 2023. Sputnik/Sergei Kuniev/Bull via REUTERS Get license rights
MOSCOW, Sept 4 — Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said after Monday’s talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin that the Black Sea Grain Agreement to help bring Ukrainian grain to the market could soon be renewed.
Russia left the deal in July – a year after it was brokered by the United Nations and Turkey – complaining that it faced sanctions on its own food and fertilizer exports.
Erdogan and the United Nations, which previously played a significant role in keeping Putin from sticking to the deal, are trying to get Putin to return to the deal.
Speaking in the Black Sea resort of Sochi after his first face-to-face meeting with Putin since 2022, Erdogan said: “As Turkey, we hope to reach a solution that meets expectations in the short term.
Putin said the West still controls Russian agricultural exports.
“We will be ready to consider the possibility of reviving the grain agreement, and I told the president about this again today – we will do this once all the agreements on the removal of restrictions on the export of Russian agricultural products are fully implemented,” Putin said near Erdogan.
It aims to get grain from Ukraine via the Black Sea to world markets and ease a global food crisis that the United Nations said was worsened by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year.
Russia and Ukraine are the world’s major agricultural producers and play an important role in the wheat, barley, corn, rapeseed, rapeseed oil, sunflower seed and sunflower oil markets.
While Russian food and fertilizer exports are not subject to Western sanctions imposed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has said restrictions on payments, logistics and insurance hamper exports.
“The West continues to block the supply of grain and fertilizers from the Russian Federation to world markets,” Putin said, adding that the West had “cheated” Russia on the deal.
By Guy Falconbridge; Additional reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne, Orhan Coskun and Ece Toksabay in Ankara, and Michelle Nichols in the United Nations; Editing by Robert Birzel and Philippa Fletcher
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