The much-ballyhooed scandal of Ukrainian wheat being kept from the world may come to an end, if the arrangements in today’s meeting between the Foreign Ministers of Russia and Turkey, Sergey Lavrov and Mevlut Cavusoglu, are not blown up by Kyiv – and their British and American controllers. The core problem has been that Kyiv mined their harbors and has refused to remove the mines or guide ships around the mines. They have protested that doing so would allow the Russians to militarily exploit the opening to shipping.
Following today’s meeting, Lavrov, according to RT and a partial transcript on the Russian Foreign Ministry website, explained: “Until recently, the Ukrainian authorities, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, publicly denied their willingness to clear these territorial waters in order to begin this process. … Now, as our Turkish friends tell us, the Ukrainian side is ready to either clear mines or ensure passage through the minefields. Let’s hope this problem gets resolved. Our military is in contact with Turkish friends discussing the details of these processes and initiatives. On our part, there have never been any obstacles to solving this problem—a problem, in fact, it is small—to solve. If the Kyiv government is ‘ripe,’ we will only be happy to cooperate.” He thanked Ankara for its willingness to help ensure that “several dozen” foreign ships carrying grain can leave Black Sea ports, where they are now “being used as hostages” by the Ukrainian side.
Lavrov to responded to a media question: “President Putin publicly said that we guarantee ... that if and when Ukraine conducts mine clearance and allows ships to depart from its ports, we will not use this situation in the interests of the ongoing special military operation. These are the guarantees of the President of Russia. We are ready to formalize them one way or another.”
Otherwise, Lavrov provided some context for the Western scandalizing: “We paid a lot of attention to the problem of the export of Ukrainian grain, which our Western colleagues, and the Ukrainians themselves, are trying to classify as a universal catastrophe. The share of Ukrainian grain in question is less than 1% of the global production of wheat and other cereals. The current situation with Ukrainian grain has nothing to do with the food crisis.” However, any and all grain does need to get to starving populations; and Cavusoglu properly called upon the West to end the sanctions on shipping Russian grain and fertilizer exports: “If we need to open up the international market to Ukrainian grain, we see the removal of obstacles standing in the way of Russia’s exports as a legitimate demand.”
