Citing Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko on Friday, the Belta news agency said Minsk is ready to allow grain transit from Ukraine to Baltic Sea ports via Belarus if the country is allowed to ship Belarusian goods through these ports.
Ukraine, one of the world’s leading grain exporters, has been unable to use its Black Sea ports since Russia sent thousands of troops to the country in February.
With a major food crisis looming, exports from Ukraine via Belarus became one of the options in the United Nations-led discussions aimed at increasing the global grain supply. Unblocking Ukraine’s Black Sea ports is another option.
In a phone call with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday, Lukashenko said that Belarus is ready to release the necessary capacity on the railway for Ukraine’s grain and is proposing negotiations between Belarus, Ukraine and countries ready to gain access to their ports. said Belta.
“At the same time, the most important thing, as stated during the meeting, is that these ports – in Germany, Poland, the Baltic States or Russia – are also open to Belarusian goods,” Belta said. Said.
“If conditions are created for the transit of Ukrainian grain, the ports that will handle it should also be able to load goods from Belarus,” he added.
Belarus, the world’s leading potassium producer, has been hit by harsh Western sanctions that stopped fertilizer exports from Baltic Sea ports in 2021-2022.
Financial sanctions imposed on Moscow since February 24 have also hit Russian fertilizer exporters and disrupted the global supply chain, raising the risk of a food crisis.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned earlier this week that any deal on the region’s commodity shipments is still far away, because “the interconnectedness of everything makes negotiations particularly complicated”.
Russia and Belarus have blamed Western sanctions for disrupting grain and fertilizer exports and risking the global food crisis.
source: Noticias
