Russia on Tuesday restated a demand for its state agricultural bank to be reconnected to the global SWIFT payments system to avert the collapse of the Black Sea grain deal, and said it would not accept a reported compromise proposal.
But Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova dismissed the idea as “deliberately unworkable”, saying it would take many months to set up such a unit and another three months to connect to SWIFT.
“The U.N. is doing all it can and we will do all we can. We’ve already worked very closely with the City of London to enable a very complex payment system for grain in order to make it work and continue to get food on people’s tables,” she said. Any disruption or halt to such trade could aggravate a food crisis in the poorest countries and push global prices higher. Since March 2022, global food prices have dropped by 22 percent, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.Russia’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday it was “obvious there are no grounds” to extend the deal beyond July 17 and that Russia was doing everything necessary for all ships covered by the deal to leave the Black Sea before that date.
The U.N. said the World Food Program has bought more than 700,000 metric tons of grain under the Black Sea deal for aid operations in those countries – matching the volumes it procured from Ukraine in 2021.
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