Moscow, Sept 7 (AFP\/APP): Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that “almost all” the Ukrainian grain shipped under a UN-backed deal to ease a global food crisis was reaching rich European nations and accused the West of deceiving developing countries.<\/p>\n
Data compiled by a joint centre in Istanbul monitoring the July agreement showed slightly more than a third of the grain delivered to European countries and another 20 percent arriving in Turkey.<\/p>\n
It also showed 30 percent reaching “low and lower-middle income countries” across the world.<\/p>\n
More shipments are expected to start arriving in famine-stricken parts of Africa and the Middle East under the UN World Food Programme whose implementation is just getting underway.<\/p>\n
But Moscow has voiced growing frustration with how the agreement was being applied.<\/p>\n
An amendment to the deal also allowed Russia to get open access to fertiliser shipments and have some economic sanctions lifted to allow it to export its own grain.<\/p>\n
The UN hailed the deal as the world’s best chance to ease an acute global food crisis stoked by the Black Sea grain blockade.<\/p>\n
But Putin said its current implementation was helping richer European countries at the expense of the developing world.<\/p>\n
“Almost all the grain exported from Ukraine is sent not to the poorest developing countries, but to EU countries,” he told an economic forum in Russia’s Pacific port of Vladivostok.<\/p>\n
Both Ukraine and Russia are two of the biggest exporters of wheat and other grain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Moscow, Sept 7 (AFP\/APP): Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that “almost all” the Ukrainian grain shipped under a UN-backed deal to ease a global food crisis was reaching rich European nations and accused the West of deceiving developing countries. Data compiled by a joint […]<\/p>\n
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