Turkey's foreign minister has emphasized how important reviving the Black Sea Grain Initiative is to global food security during a meeting in Moscow with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Hakan Fidan, who is in Moscow to make preparations for a meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin, spoke at a joint news conference on August 31 with Lavrov, who said Russia would return to the deal if problems that Moscow raised about it are solved.
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Fidan said he and his team "underlined its critical role for global food security and stability in the Black Sea." When the deal was brokered in July 2022, the UN and Turkey hailed it as a way to help tackle a global food crisis that worsened after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Russia quit the deal last month, complaining that Western sanctions were impeding its own exports of food and fertilizers and that too little of the grain was getting to the poorest countries.
Turkey has since sought to convince Moscow to return to the agreement, which allowed the safe passage of Ukrainian grain shipments on the Black Sea and included an inspection regime managed by officials from Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, and the UN in Istanbul.
Lavrov said before the meeting that he and Fidan would discuss a proposal by Moscow for an alternative to the deal.
Under the plan, Russia would send a million tons of grain to Turkey at a discounted price, with financial support from Qatar, to be processed in Turkey and sent to countries most in need, the Russian Foreign Ministry said. It was not clear what incentive Qatar would have to take part in the arrangement.
"We consider this project as the optimal working alternative to the Black Sea deal," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement on August 30.
The original deal had enabled the shipment of millions of tons of Ukrainian grain to countries in Africa and Asia through Ukrainian Black Sea.
After withdrawing from the deal Russia began attacking Ukrainian ports and storehouses, destroying millions of tons of grain, which prompted accusations that Moscow was again using food as a weapon of war.
The Russian Foreign Ministry statement on August 30 said Lavrov would restate Moscow's position that following its withdrawal from the grain deal, it would consider all ships heading to Ukraine as potentially carrying military cargo.