Grain deal extended for another two months

On May 17, the day before its completion, participants in the Black Sea grain deal extended the agreement by 60 days. This was announced by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. This was later confirmed by the Russian Foreign Ministry. According to Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, all distortions in the implementation of the agreement “should be corrected as quickly as possible.” On March 18, the deal was extended by two months.

According to Erdogan, Ankara will make every effort to fully implement the deal and extend it in subsequent periods. “Our Russian friends have declared that they will not interfere with the exit of Turkish ships from the ports of Nikolaev and Olvia. We are grateful to them for this,” Erdogan said. Currently, according to TASS, there are up to 10 Turkish commercial ships in Ukrainian ports. In addition, the Turkish leader thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian head of state Volodymyr Zelensky and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres for supporting Turkish efforts in this process.

The previous round of negotiations to extend the deal was held in Istanbul on May 10-11, but was unsuccessful. Following a meeting between the delegations of Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and UN representatives, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershin told TASS that on May 18 the deal “will cease to operate” if Moscow does not receive a guarantee that its requirements will be met, in particular on the issue of resuming the operation of the Togliatti ammonia pipeline – Odessa.

Russia presented its terms for extending the Black Sea initiative on 17 April. In addition to the requirements for the ammonia pipeline, Moscow requires to connect Rosselkhozbank to the SWIFT system, which would allow processing payments from Russian farmers on the world market; to resume the supply of agricultural machinery and spare parts to Russia; abolish restrictions on insurance of Russian ships with grain and remove the ban on their access to ports; unlock the foreign assets of Russian companies associated with the production and transportation of food.

On April 28, Erdogan, during a telephone conversation with UN Secretary General Guterres, proposed expanding the working group on the resumption of the ammonia pipeline with participants from Turkey. At the same time, the UN Secretary General invited the Turkish state bank Ziraat Bank to take on the role of processing financial transactions for transactions with Russian grain and fertilizers. In early May, bank representatives said they would not work with the Russians without written permission from the United States and the United Nations, which was never received.

The West is not ready to become a guarantor of the execution of the Russian part of the Black Sea grain deal, Viktor Nadein-Raevsky, a senior researcher at IMEMO RAS, believes: “Otherwise, this would involve lifting restrictions on Russian ships entering Western ports, lifting the ban on their insurance.” In addition, the West is not going to even partially remove the restrictions imposed on Russia, the expert noted.

At the same time, the further fate of the deal in the event of victory in the second round of the presidential elections in Turkey on May 28 opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroglu is not clear, continues Nadein-Raevsky. “Although in words he speaks of his interest in continuing to play the role of a mediator, at the same time he accuses Russia of interfering in the elections,” the expert says.