G20 Statement on the Black Sea Grain Deal

Sept. 10, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—The G20 statement, issued after the summit in New Delhi yesterday, expressed appreciation for the efforts of Türkiye to revive the two memorandums that made up the Black Sea Grain Initiative “and call for their full, timely and effective implementation to ensure the immediate and unimpeded deliveries of grain, foodstuffs, and fertilizers/inputs from the Russian Federation and Ukraine. This is necessary to meet the demand in developing and least developed countries, particularly those in Africa....

“In this context, emphasizing the importance of sustaining food and energy security, we called for the cessation of military destruction or other attacks on relevant infrastructure. We also expressed deep concern about the adverse impact that conflicts have on the security of civilians thereby exacerbating existing socio-economic fragilities and vulnerabilities and hindering an effective humanitarian response.”

the statement added.

Earlier, Bloomberg reported that at the summit, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged for the G20 leaders to meet some of Russia’s demands, in order to revive the grain deal. According to Bloomberg’s account, Türkiye was asking world leaders to facilitate insurance of Russian food and fertilizer exports by Lloyds of London, and to reconnect Moscow to the SWIFT system for international payments, according to three Turkish officials familiar with the discussions.

Türkiye told its counterparts that the way to revive the deal is to ease some sanctions, which Moscow says prevent it from importing agricultural equipment, such as tractors or spare parts, the Turkish officials said. The U.S. and its allies dismiss Russia’s claims that the limits are restricting Moscow’s farm exports, and have, so far, resisted calls to ease the sanctions.

In Moscow, the Kremlin stood firm on Russia’s conditions for re-entering the grain deal. “The Westerners are said to supposedly be ready to promise SWIFT access to a subsidiary of Rosselkhozbank [Russian Agricultural Bank],” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in response to a Sept. 8 Reuters report describing the content of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ proposals for restoring the deal. “The agreements say that access to SWIFT should be granted to Rosselkhozbank itself and not its subsidiary,” Peskov told journalists. The sides need to “go back to the basics of those agreements that were struck from the outset,” he said, and that Russia was “promised that they would be fulfilled long ago.”

Moscow is prepared to return to the deal, once these conditions are met, Peskov said. “We believe we have a right ... to wait until [our conditions] are met,” he said, insisting: “All the conditions are well known. They do not need any distortions or interpretations. They are absolutely clear and all of this is absolutely realistic.”