African countries are severely affected by the growing crisis, which has pushed up the prices of cereals, cooking oils, fuel and fertilizers.
The Kremlin has said that Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is meeting with African Union leaders, will tell them that Moscow is not to blame for the growing food crisis affecting its continent.
State television showed Putin greeting Senegalese President Macky Sall, President of the AU, and Moussa Faki Mahamat, President of the AU Commission, at the start of talks in the tourist resort of Sochi, southern Russia. Friday.
The Russian military has seized much of Ukraine’s southern coast in the course of its 100-day war, and its warships control access to the country’s Black Sea ports. But it continues to blame Ukraine and the West for the stoppage resulting from grain exports to Ukraine.
“With a high degree of probability and confidence, I can assume that the president will give a comprehensive explanation of his view of the situation with Ukraine’s grain,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
“The president will explain to our African friends the real state of affairs,” Peskov said. “He will explain once again what is happening there, who has mined the ports, what it takes for the grain to go, that no one on the Russian side is blocking these ports.”
African countries are severely affected by the growing crisis, which has pushed up the prices of cereals, cooking oils, fuel and fertilizers.
Russia and Ukraine account for almost a third of the world’s wheat supplies, while Russia is also a global exporter of key fertilizers and Ukraine is a major exporter of corn and sunflower oil.
Moscow has blamed the situation on all naval mines floating near Ukrainian ports and Western sanctions that are affecting its own exports of grain and fertilizer due to the impact on shipping, banking and insurance. .
Russia has said it is willing to allow food-carrying vessels to leave Ukraine in exchange for lifting some sanctions, a proposal Ukraine has called “blackmail”.
In initial remarks at Friday’s meeting, Putin made no reference to the food crisis, but spoke broadly about Moscow’s desire to develop ties with Africa, saying trade turnover had risen more than 34 percent. one hundred in the first months of this year.