Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan were set to meet next week for high-stakes talks on the scuttled Black Sea grain deal that the United Nations is attempting to resuscitate.
The talks are planned for Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi, the Kremlin said on Friday almost two months since Russia pulled out of the U.N.-brokered deal that had enabled wartime shipping of Ukraine's exports.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin and Erdoğan would meet Monday. Turkey, which oversaw shipping and cargo inspections, also signed the Black Sea Grain Initiative in July 2022 to allow food supplies to reach global markets.
Ukraine and Russia are critical global suppliers of foodstuffs, fertilizer and other basic commodities, particularly for countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia threatened by growing hunger and poverty.
The latest data, however, show China, Spain and Turkey have been the biggest recipients.
'Concrete proposals' for restoring the deal
Under the deal, which allowed three Black Sea ports – Odesa, Chornomorsk, and Yuzhny/Pivdennyi – to send and receive ships, almost 33 million metric tons of grain left Ukraine.
The deal, which eased Russia's naval blockade in the Black Sea, established a maritime corridor in the wake of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine since Feb. 24, 2022. The corridor was established for humanitarian reasons, because global food prices soared soon after the invasion.
Earlier this week, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres sent Moscow a new proposal for reviving the deal. Despite Russia's complaints about restrictions on shipping and insurance, it has exported record amounts of wheat since last year.
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov indicated, however, that Moscow was not satisfied with Guterres' proposal. Lavrov told a press conference on Thursday that he has given Turkey a set of conditions for restoring Ukraine's shipments.
“As soon as talks turn into concrete decisions, we’ll be ready to resume the Ukrainian part of the grain package that same day," said Lavrov.
Guterres told reporters on Thursday that his letter to Lavrov included "a set of concrete proposals allowing to create the conditions for the renewal" of the deal.
"We believe that the Black Sea Initiative has given a very important contribution to make the food markets more adequate to our objectives of food security," Guterres said.
"It has brought down prices. It has created conditions for access to the global markets of many countries, namely the developing world," he said. "We have some concrete solutions for the concerns allowing for a more effective access of Russian food and fertilizers to global markets at adequate prices."
