The Kremlin said on Tuesday that Russia could not return to the Black Sea grain export deal because the part of the agreement that affects Russian interests is “not being implemented”, rejecting a call by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for Moscow to extend the pact, which expired on July 17.

On Monday, Guterres asked Russia to allow Ukraine to safely resume grain exports from Black Sea ports despite what Russia calls a “special military operation,” according to a proposal he made to President Vladimir Putin, Reuters and EFE reported, as cited by Agerpres.

The UN secretary-general, who earlier sent a letter about the deal to Russian President Vladimir Putin, called on Moscow on Monday to revive the Black Sea Initiative, which is “necessary to ensure the stability of supplies and prices” of food around the world.

“I call on the Russian Federation to resume implementation of the Black Sea Agreements and call on the world community to remain united in this effort to find effective solutions,” Guterres said at the opening of the UN Rome Summit on Food Security.

But the Kremlin suggested that Guterres’ offer did not address his main complaint, which was that no progress had been made on a related deal to ease Russian food and fertilizer exports amid Western sanctions imposed in response to the war.

“Indeed, Mr. Guterres’ letter announces, once again, a kind of action plan and contains a promise that at some point it will be possible to implement the Russian part of these agreements,” Kremlin spokesman Dmytro Peskov told the press on Tuesday.

“Unfortunately, it is currently impossible to return to the agreement, because it (the agreement on Russia) was not implemented and de facto has never been implemented,” said Peskov.

Putin made it clear that Moscow would be ready to renew the agreement after implementing the memorandum on Russia, the Kremlin spokesman added.

What does Moscow want?

Moscow requests to restore the connection of the Russian agricultural bank “Rosselkhozbank” to the international payment system SWIFT; removal of sanctions on spare parts for agricultural machinery; unlocking transport logistics and insurance; unlocking assets and resuming the operation of the Tolyatti-Odesa ammonia pipeline, which was damaged on June 5 by an explosion that Moscow attributes to Kyiv.

The well-known Russian publicist Yulia Latynina, a columnist for Novaya Gazeta, stated at the end of last week in a program for the Live Nails channel (founded by the former team of the Russian radio station Echo of Moscow, which was closed after the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine), that Rosselkhozbank is controlled by Dmytro Patrushev, the son of Mykola Patrushev, the secretary of the Security Council of Russia, who is considered one of the Kremlin’s “uls”.

The agreement reached between the UN and Turkey in July 2022 was supposed to help prevent a global food crisis by allowing the safe export of grain blocked by the war in Ukraine.

According to Peskov, Russia will discuss grain supplies with African countries during the Russian-African summit, which will be held on Thursday and Friday in St. Petersburg.

On Monday, the Russian president mentioned the possibility of providing cheap or free grain to the poorest countries in Africa.

Russian sabotage

Meanwhile, the Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine released a purportedly official internal Russian report on Tuesday, detailing sabotage that prevented up to 20 million tons of Ukrainian grain from leaving the Black Sea during the annual so-called grain deal.

According to the GUR, the main goal of the “Joint Coordination Center” created by Russia in Istanbul for the implementation of this agreement concluded last July by Moscow (and Kyiv) with the mediation of the UN and Turkey was to reduce the export of Ukrainian grain through the corridor provided for by this agreement as much as possible, notes EFE.

This goal, according to the GUR, was achieved by blocking Russia’s coordinated inspections of vessels entering the Black Sea to load Ukrainian grain.

In one of the fragments of this document, signed by the “Joint Coordination Center”, it is said that “the quality inspection of ships was also a key element in reducing the uncontrolled growth of grain exports from Ukrainian ports”, the GUR condemns in its Telegram account.

Another fragment of this report, which was supposed to be sent to the Kremlin, states that measures to “reduce the number of ships entering Ukrainian ports and significantly limit the volume of food exports from Ukraine” led to “Kyiv’s inability to export approximately 20 million tons” of products.

Sources from the Ukrainian port of Pivdenny (Yuzhnyi), one of three from which Russia has pledged to allow grain exports under the agreement, have repeatedly denounced to EFE in recent months the sometimes total blockade imposed by Moscow through inspections.

“The document proves that all actions to sabotage the grain agreement were part of a unique pre-developed plan, and the targeted bombing of Ukrainian port infrastructure is just another step in its implementation,” the GUR notes about Russian attacks on Ukrainian ports in recent days.

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