RUSSIA will be ready to ship free grain to some of the poorest nations in Africa within the next three months.
This is the promise announced by President Vladimir Putin during a speech at the recently held Russia-Africa Summit in St. Petersburg.
According to Putin, Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Mali, Somali, the Central African Republic, and Eritrea will each receive 25,000 to 50,000 tons of grain and Russia will cover the delivery costs of the shipments.
It can be remembered that Russia broke off from the Black Sea grain deal after refusing to extend it for another 60 days.
Russia had long insisted that the agreement had failed to achieve its aims.
Putin also said that the United Nations is unable to persuade Western countries to lift economic sanctions on Russian food and fertilizer exports which was also part of the deal.
According to the Russian president, “They created obstacles even to our plans to donate fertilizers to the poorest nations that needed them. Out of 262,000 tons of the fertilizers blocked in European ports, we’ve managed to ship only two lots: merely 20,000 tons to Malawi and 34,000 tons to Kenya. The rest remains in the hands of the Europeans”.
Putin also said slammed Western leaders, calling them ‘hypocritical’ for accusing Russia of causing instability in the global food market.
As for energy exports, Putin touted that Russian companies have been boosting energy deliveries to Africa.
In the past two years, Russia has ramped up its exports of oil, petroleum products, and liquefied natural gas to African countries by a factor of 2.6–as said by Putin.
Supplies of Russian oil products also soared threefold in the first five months of 2023 to 8 million tons.
Moscow is also developing logistics and financial infrastructure for energy deliveries.
The two-day summit takes place on July 27 to 28 and is currently being attended by guest delegations from more than 40 nations.
The Kremlin said foreign dignitaries have gathered in St. Petersburg in defiance of Western pressure, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying, that Western powers including the United States and France have tried to bully other countries into skipping the said event.
“Essentially, they are denying the African countries their sovereign rights to choose their own partners, expand cooperation in different fields, and discuss relevant issues,”
Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesman said.
The White House has previously denied meddling in the foreign policy of African nations.
