KYIV (Reuters) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday everything must be done so that the Black Sea grain export corridor continues to be used after Russia halted its participation, his spokesperson said.
A deal brokered last July by the United Nations and Turkey allowed Ukrainian grain to be exported through the Black Sea after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“Even without the Russian Federation, everything must be done so that we can use this Black Sea corridor. We are not afraid,” spokesperson Serhiy Nykyforov quoted Zelenskiy as saying.
“We were approached by companies, ship-owners. They said that they are ready, if Ukraine lets them go, and Turkey continues to let them through, then everyone is ready to continue supplying grain.”
He ordered Ukraine’s foreign ministry to prepare an official note to the U.N. and Turkey on whether they would be ready to continue with their part of the deal.
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who is in New York this week to participate in a U.N. security council meeting, urged Russia to stop “playing hunger games.”
“The immediate outcome of non-extension of the agreement will mean that prices for grain all across the globe will go up, and people in the most vulnerable regions of Asia, Africa, they will feel it, and this is the result of Russian actions,” Kuleba said in an interview with CBS Mornings.
“So Russia is using hunger as an instrument to blackmail the world, pursuing its own commercial interest. Stop playing hunger games.”
Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said grain “cannot be a legitimate military target.”
“The Black Sea is not Russia’s internal waters and is not subject to its jurisdiction,” he said on Twitter.
(Reporting by Olena Harmash, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
