Sergei Lavrov addressed non-Western countries from the UN rostrum

At a press conference held on April 25 in the evening Moscow time, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated the impasse that the grain initiative had reached. According to him, the blame for this lies with Russia’s “Western colleagues”. For the full implementation of the deal, Lavrov continued, it is necessary to reconnect the Russian Agricultural Bank, which is under sanctions, to the SWIFT system, but Western countries do not want to do this, offering only one-time initiatives in return. “When we are told that let’s build all future work on this principle, this is not serious. If you want to systematically solve the problem of food shortages in world markets, then you just need to return our bank to the SWIFT system,” Lavrov summed up.

A day earlier, Lavrov held a meeting in New York with UN Secretary General António Guterres. As stated in the message of the Russian Foreign Ministry, the Russian minister “reiterated in detail the root causes of the current crisis, the course and goals of the special military operation [на Украине]aimed at eliminating threats to Russia’s national security. In addition, the minister criticized the West’s approach to solving the Ukrainian problem, which consists in using the UN platform to promote anti-Russian initiatives. This, Lavrov noted, only leads to a prolongation of the conflict. Lavrov arrived in New York in connection with Russia’s chairmanship of the UN Security Council from 1 to 30 April.

Lavrov and Guterres also discussed the situation with the grain deal. During the conversation, the minister drew the Secretary General’s attention to the fact that the terms of the agreement with respect to the Russian side have not yet been fulfilled. “Despite the interconnected package nature of these agreements against the backdrop of stable supplies of Ukrainian grain, there are still no concrete shifts in the implementation of the memorandum between Russia and the UN Secretariat,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

On April 25, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that the attacks on Sevastopol on March 23 and April 24 using semi-submersible unmanned boats were carried out from the waters of Odessa, which, according to the terms of the grain deal, is a zone prohibited for use in military operations against Russia. Therefore, the extension of this deal after May 18 is jeopardized.

Lavrov also accused the US of failing to comply with the UN Headquarters agreement, including not issuing visas to Russian representatives, illegally expropriating Russian diplomatic property, and imposing restrictions on the movement of Russian diplomats. On April 24, Lavrov delivered a speech at a meeting of the UN Security Council. In it, he condemned the policy of the United States and other Western countries that are trying to move away from the “UN-centric system” in favor of rules that are convenient for them. According to Lavrov, in this way the West is trying to restrain the natural processes of the development of multilateralism, applying the blocking of access to modern technologies and financial services, ousting them from supply chains, destroying the critical infrastructure of competitors and other unfriendly actions. As the minister noted, Western countries no longer hide the fact that they are pursuing their policy solely in the interests of the “golden billion”. “Let’s call a spade a spade: no one allowed the Western minority to speak on behalf of all mankind,” summed up Lavrov.

Lavrov’s speech in the Security Council undoubtedly sends an important signal to non-Western countries that are trying to determine their own fate, Denis Denisov, an expert at the Financial University under the Russian government, explains. According to him, many states that do not want to follow in the wake of the United States, as well as members of the conditional “non-aligned movement” are actively thinking about the future of the world order. The elites of these countries clearly do not want to become the dominion of the West, which demonstrates a clear trend towards the development of a multipolar world. Consequently, Denisov continues, there are high hopes that the key countries of the non-Western world will actively advocate for multipolarity and independence from the West. As for the grain deal, the situation with it becomes more complicated – the more time passes, the more dimensions appear in this deal. Earlier, the expert reminds, the Foreign Ministry has already announced the impossibility of prolonging the deal if Russia’s conditions on it are not met. In a situation where the clauses of the agreement regarding Russia have not been implemented, and Ukraine is using the terms of the deal for its military needs, Moscow’s refusal to extend the Black Sea initiative will not come as a surprise, Denisov concludes.