Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, has pledged that grain exported through the Black Sea will reach developing countries, especially in Africa, free of charge.
Erdogan has acted as mediator for Russia to return to the grain export agreement from Ukraine, thanks to which 10 million tons have already left Ukraine since July, according to UN estimates.
This week, the Turkish president spoke with his Russian counterpart, who promised to remove obstacles so that the grain could reach «countries such as Djibouti, Somalia and Sudan», as Erdogan explained in a business meeting reported by the Anatolia agency.
The Turkish President hopes that the shipment of grain and fertilizers to developing countries will also be one of the central themes of the G20 leaders’ summit to be held this month in Bali (Indonesia), to which Putin is also theoretically invited.
However, Putin has already warned that he reserves the right to pull Russia out of the agreement with Ukraine again if he considers that Ukraine violates the commitments in any way, mainly in the area of security. In this case, Moscow would continue to allow shipments to Turkey, according to the Russian president.
