UN Secretary General António Guterres announced that thanks to the agreement to export grain from Ukraine, more than 10 million tons of grain have already left the country since July, a «milestone» that the United Nations expects to continue expanding after Russia’s return to the pact this week.
Guterres has defended that this agreement «is making a difference» and has defended its importance to improve food security worldwide, to the extent that the outbreak of the Ukrainian conflict in February has led to a break in the supply chain and a generalized rise in commodity prices.
«The initiative has worked,» added the top UN official, who in statements to the media praised the «crucial contribution» of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in ensuring that the rupture announced last weekend by Russia was resolved in a matter of days.
Erdogan has spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin and also with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodimir Zelenski. Turkey also hosts in Istanbul the center which, with the help of the UN, coordinates the almost constant departures of ships from Ukrainian ports.
The Turkish government confirmed Thursday the departure of six new ships with grain, although Putin warned on Wednesday that he reserved the right to break the agreement again if he considered that Ukraine was not complying with the security guarantees contained in it.
