President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia and developing countries had been “shamelessly duped” under Ukraine’s grain export agreement under the auspices of the United Nations, promising to try to revise its terms to limit the countries that can receive supplies, Reuters reports. The head of the Kremlin claims that grain does not reach poor countries.

Vladimir Putin said at an economic forum in the Russian Far Eastern city of Vladivostok that Ukrainian grain did not end up among the poorest countries in the world thanks to the agreement concluded between Turkey and the United Nations, as originally expected.

“What we are seeing is a shameless deception … a deception by the international community regarding our partners in Africa and other countries that are in dire need of food. This is simply a deception,” Putin said.

Putin has warned of a global food crisis if the situation is not resolved and said he would contact Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan to discuss changes to the agreement to limit which countries can receive supplies.

“It is clear that with this approach, the scale of the world’s food problems will only grow … which could lead to an unprecedented humanitarian disaster,” Putin said.

Putin accuses the West of behaving like colonial powers

Putin said, without citing a source, that only two of the 87 ships carrying 60,000 tons of food had gone to poor countries, accusing the West of behaving like colonial powers.

“That’s the way things are – they were once colonizers and remained so internally,” he said about European countries.

“Almost all grain exported from Ukraine is sent not to the poorest developing countries, but to the countries of the European Union,” Putin said on Wednesday at an economic forum in the city of Vladivostok.

Most Ukrainian grain went to Turkey

The UN figures show that non-EU Turkey was the most common single destination for shipments from Ukraine, with shipments also going to China, India, Egypt, Yemen, Somalia and Djibouti.

Putin said Russia would extend the deal in the hope that its goals would still be met.

Ukraine’s agriculture minister said on Wednesday that he was not aware of any official moves by Russia to change the terms of the agreement, which remains the only significant diplomatic progress in the six-month conflict.

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