SOCHI, Russia
Russian President Vladimir
Putin met African Union leaders on Friday and the Kremlin said he would tell
them that Moscow was not to blame for the growing food crisis affecting their continent.Courtesy
State TV showed Putin greeting
Senegalese President Macky Sall, chairman of the AU, and Moussa Faki Mahamat,
chairman of the AU Commission, at the start of talks in the southern Russian
resort of Sochi.
Russia’s army has seized much
of Ukraine’s southern coastline in the course of its 100-day war and its
warships control access to the country’s Black Sea ports. But it continues to
blame Ukraine and the West for the resulting halt in Ukrainian grain exports.
“With a high degree of
probability and confidence, I can assume that the president will give
exhaustive explanations of his vision of the situation with Ukrainian grain,”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
“The president will tell our
African friends the real state of affairs, he will explain once again what is
happening there, who has mined the ports, what is needed for grain to go, that
no-one on the Russian side is blocking these ports,” Peskov said.
African countries are acutely
affected by the growing crisis, which has sent prices of grains, cooking oils,
fuel and fertilizer soaring.
Russia and Ukraine account for
nearly a third of global wheat supplies, while Russia is also a key global
fertilizer exporter and Ukraine is a major exporter of corn and sunflower oil.
Moscow blames the situation on
all the naval mines floating near Ukrainian ports and on Western sanctions
which are hitting its own grain and fertiliser exports because of the impact on
shipping, banking and insurance.
Russia has said it is ready to
allow vessels carrying food to leave Ukraine in return for the lifting of some
sanctions, a proposal that Ukraine has described as “blackmail”.
In opening comments at
Friday’s meeting, Putin made no reference to the food crisis but spoke in
general terms of Moscow’s desire to develop ties with Africa, saying trade
turnover had risen by more than 34% in the first few months of this year.
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