Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he was not aware of any new grain deal proposals flagged by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He told the TASS agency about this.
According to Lavrov, Erdogan was referring to long-standing agreements with Russian President Vladimir Putin on their readiness to work together on preferential supplies of grain, primarily wheat, to developing countries that are most in need of this commodity.
Before this, Erdogan said during the NATO summit in Vilnius that President Putin had made several proposals regarding the grain deal. The Turkish leader noted that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is in favor of extending the grain deal.
On July 12, the representative of the UN Secretary-General, Stephane Dujarric, spoke about the continuation of contacts with the Russian Federation on the grain deal, but the absence of new data on the Black Sea initiative. Speaking about Moscow’s withdrawal from it, Dujarric said that there were “options for action for various cases.”
The Grain Deal or the Black Sea Initiative is an international agreement on the export of grain from Ukrainian ports, which Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, and the UN signed in Istanbul on July 22, 2022. Russia and Ukraine signed the agreement separately: each of the countries concluded a grain deal with Turkey and the UN. The deal has been extended until July 17, 2023.
Earlier, the European Commission named the amount of sovereign assets of Russia frozen in the European Union.
