Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday that Russia would support the idea of reopening ammonia exports through Ukraine if Moscow returned the prisoners of war, and the Kremlin promptly rejected it.
In an interview with Reuters, Zelensky said he has proposed the agreement to the United Nations (UN), which proposes the resumption of Russian ammonia exports from Ukraine to alleviate the global fertilizer shortage.
“I am against the Russian Federation’s supply of ammonia through our land. I would only do it in exchange for our prisoners. This is what I offered to the UN,” he said in an interview at the presidential office.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the idea, according to Tass news agency. According to the report, “Are humans and ammonia the same thing?” she asked.
The UN has proposed pumping ammonia gas from Russian fertilizer producer Uralchem through pipeline to the border with Ukraine, where it will be purchased by US commodity trader Trammo.
The pipeline is designed to pump up to 2.5 million tons of ammonia per year from Russia’s Volga region to the port of Pivdennyi, known as Yuzhny in Russian, near Odessa on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast.
The pipeline was shut down after Russia sent troops to Ukraine on February 24.
Hundreds of Russian soldiers were captured during a lightning counterattack in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine, Zelenskiy said.
But he added that Russia is detaining more Ukrainian soldiers in Ukraine than it has Russian POWs.
The fate of Ukrainian soldiers detained by Russia, and especially those captured after months of waiting at the Azovstal steelworks in the besieged city of Mariupol, is an extremely sensitive issue in Ukraine.
Some relatives gathered on Friday outside the government district of Kiev, where Zelensky’s office is located, holding banners that read “Bring the heroes of Azovstal home.”
source: Noticias
