Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will attempt to convince Vladimir Putin to reinstate a grain export agreement with Ukraine during his visit to Sochi on Monday.
Russia withdrew from the agreement in July, a year after the United Nations and Turkey negotiated it, citing obstacles to its own food and fertilizer exports and a deficiency of Ukrainian grain destined for needy nations.
The talks with Erdogan, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, will take place around noon Moscow time.
The United Nations has warned that Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has exacerbated the global food crisis, and this agreement aims to transport Ukrainian grain to international markets via the Black Sea.
Putin keeps saying that the West was responsible for Russia’s withdrawal from the agreement because it was unsuccessful in carrying out a separate memorandum with the United Nations. Putin has also stated that Russia could return to the grain deal if the West meets its obligations.
On Thursday, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres announced that he had sent Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov a series of concrete proposals to revive the agreement.
In order to secure Russia’s approval of the initial agreement, the United Nations agreed to assist the country with food and fertilizer exports for three years.
Reconnecting the Russian Agricultural Bank to the international payments system SWIFT is one of Moscow’s most pressing demands. The EU denied access in June 2022.