War in Ukraine: what are the Russian demands to renew the grain agreement?

Beyond the din of arms, a catchphrase has been recurring since the start of the war: the agreement on the transit of Ukrainian grain in the Black Sea. Signed in July 2022 between Russia and Ukraine, under the aegis of Turkey, this initiative has already been renewed twice. But when it was due to expire on Monday evening at 9 p.m. GMT, the Kremlin announced in the morning that the agreement was "de facto finished", and that Russia would not return to it until its conditions are met. .

The agreement initially aimed to relieve the risk of famine in the world, by guaranteeing the marketing of Ukrainian agricultural products despite the war. It guaranteed the safety of cargo traffic in the Black Sea departing from the ports of Ukraine and imposed an inspection of the ships of the representatives of the signatories. To date, this initiative has enabled the export of nearly 33 million tonnes of cereals, mostly wheat and corn.

For several weeks, negotiations had been underway to try to convince Moscow to renew the agreement. But as of July 4, Russia had warned that it saw “no reason” to extend it. Tuesday evening, July 11, Russia even launched a series of drone attacks against a grain terminal in the Odessa region, which is home to three key ports for the export of grain. Thursday, July 13, Vladimir Putin regretted that “not a single one” of Russian requests had been taken into account at this stage.

Moscow complains in particular of obstacles to its own deliveries of agricultural products. The July 2022 agreement provided for the lifting of obstacles to the export of Russian fertilizers and to the financial transactions of the Russian Agricultural Bank. But Vladimir Poutine denounces the non-respect of this point. In response, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres proposed to “remove impediments to the financial transactions of the Agricultural Bank of Russia.” A letter had been sent to this effect to the head of the Kremlin, and a UN-EU meeting took place on Thursday and Friday on this subject.

For its part, the EU had proposed in early July that the Russian agricultural bank be reconnected to the international payment system SWIFT, from which it had been withdrawn in June 2022 in retaliation for the war in Ukraine. According to the Financial Times, the EU proposed to the Russian bank to create a subsidiary which would have access to the said system. But the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry had deemed this solution “deliberately impractical” because it took far too long to put in place.

To renew the grain deal, the Russian authorities also demanded the return to service of the Togliatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline. This channel had been damaged at the beginning of June and the two belligerents had at the time returned the responsibility. Before being hit, the pipeline carried 2.5 million tons of Russian ammonia a year from the Volga region to the Ukrainian port of Pivdennyi on the Black Sea.

Another point of tension: the delivery of cereals to countries in need, especially in Africa. “Main objective of the agreement”, this point “is not achieved”, regretted the Kremlin on Saturday, after a telephone call between Vladimir Putin and his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa. According to Moscow, only 3% of the 32 million tonnes of food goods produced by kyiv over the past year are delivered to the poorest countries. A figure disputed by the EU, which evokes a ratio of 49%.