Press release on the UN chief’s comments on the Istanbul agreements

On the day when the Black Sea Grain Initiative on the export of Ukrainian grain expired, the UN Secretary-General issued a large press release. Apart from twisting the facts about the implementation of the Istanbul agreements again, Antonio Guterres acted in violation of all the laws of diplomatic correspondence by making public his personal letter to President of Russia Vladimir Putin. Regrettably, he did the same with his April 24 letter on the Togliatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline. In this connection, we deem it necessary to make the facts of the matter available to the public.

The UN Secretary-General obviously prefers to focus on the Ukrainian part of the two agreements signed in Istanbul a year ago, the Black Sea Grain Initiative and the Russia-UN Memorandum of Understanding on facilitating Russia’s agricultural exports. According to him, the world has been saved from hunger thanks to the shipping of 32 million tonnes of grain from Ukrainian ports (where corn fodder constituted over 70 percent and was delivered to “well-fed” countries).

The UN Secretariat obviously does not care for the export of Russian grain, most of it wheat, delivered to countries in Asia (60 percent) and Africa (30 percent), or fertilisers. This is clear from an open hint regarding the termination of the UN’s efforts to implement its commitments under the Memorandum of Understanding as expressed in Paragraph 1 of the document on the unimpeded export of Ukrainian agricultural products. The UN Secretary-General noted that this is Russia’s choice. In this case, it is the UN Secretary-General’s choice to deliberately disregard the fact that both the Black Sea Initiative and the Memorandum of Understanding clearly stipulate the delivery of Russian ammonia, which has not been ensured, and the Togliatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline was blown up, in Ukraine-controlled territory, on June 5.

Neither had the UN General-Secretary quoted a part of his letter of April 24 to President Putin, which reads that resuming the operation of the Togliatti-Odessa pipeline is of critical importance in terms of global ammonia prices and hence global food security. He has not recalled his own conclusion that global ammonia exports have decreased by 70 percent, or his special visit to Kiev on March 8, during which he presumably managed to “separate” the issue of the ammonia pipeline from the other preconditions put forth by the Kiev regime. The explosion of the pipeline, which delivered around 2 million tonnes of raw materials annually for the production of fertilisers enough to feed 45 million people, has shown clearly the “efficiency” of the UN Secretariat’s efforts to reduce the threat of hunger and the Kiev regime’s attitude to its efforts.

At the same time, a great deal has been said about the reduction of global food prices thanks to the Black Sea Initiative. However, they do not mention the fact that the declared 23 percent reduction in food prices was calculated in comparison with the figures during the price shock of March 2022, and these prices have stabilised in a natural manner in market conditions. Grain prices have hardly changed on the global exchanges in the past few days.

Another question is why the UN Security Council did not react in any way to the signing of the Istanbul agreements if they are so important for global food security. The answer is very simple: In July and November 2022, the United States, Britain and France blocked the adoption of all Security Council documents that mentioned the Russia-UN Memorandum of Understanding. Welcoming or even mentioning that document, which provides for excluding Russian food and fertiliser exports from the illegal unilateral sanctions they continue to grind out, is unacceptable to them. However, the UN Secretary-General prefers to forget about this uncomfortable issue, mentioning the package nature of the agreements only when they need a pretext for withdrawing from the Memorandum of Understanding.

At the same time, Paragraph 6 of the document says that it will remain in effect for a period of three years, and that the sides “will inform each other in writing three months in advance of the date on which they intend to stop applying the present Memorandum.” Therefore, the UN Secretariat has 90 days to continue its efforts to facilitate Russia’s agricultural exports. It is also a period during which the UN Secretary-General planned to “enable a subsidiary of the Russian Agricultural Bank to regain access to SWIFT,” as he wrote in the letter he has quoted.

Russia’s attitude to this far from new proposal has not changed and has been forwarded to UNCTAD Secretary-General Rebeca Grynspan, who is supervising the implementation of the Russian-UN Memorandum. There is no alternative to the Russian Agricultural Bank’s reconnection to SWIFT either through a marginal source like JP Morgan, or within the framework of a potential Citi and Afreximbank platform, or through any branches and subsidiaries. All these palliative measures cannot be implemented and are only designed to create a semblance of activity at a time when the UN cannot influence Washington and Brussels, which control the payment systems, any more than it can control the Kiev regime, which exploded the ammonia pipeline.

In conclusion, we would like to point out that the UN Secretary-General and his staff have remained blind to Kiev’s terrorist attacks and subversive activities. Zelensky’s regime used the humanitarian corridor and the navigation safety provisions under the Black Sea Initiative to attack Russian civilian and military facilities, thereby violating the letter and spirit of the agreement signed to “facilitate the unimpeded export of food, sunflower oil, and fertilisers from Ukrainian controlled Black Sea ports.” The latest terrorist attack, during which two people died and an underage girl was injured, targeted the Crimean Bridge on July 17. However, the UN Secretariat did not even deem it necessary to express condolences.