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Russia sees no grounds to revive the 2022 Black Sea grain initiative, from which Moscow withdrew in 2023, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko told reporters Wednesday, as Russian and Ukrainian attacks continue to hit export facilities around the Black Sea.
"There was a deal ... But a substantial part of it was not implemented. Do you see any change in the West's position? I don't," Grushko told reporters on the sidelines of a forum in Vladivostok.
Grushko's comments come as Türkiye works to reopen a channel for grain shipments and seeks to establish a new arrangement between Moscow and Kyiv.
Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Monday that Ankara had prepared a plan for the safe passage of grain and was communicating with both Moscow and Kyiv.
Türkiye and the United Nations brokered the Black Sea Grain Initiative in July 2022 to allow Ukrainian agricultural products to leave Black Sea ports despite the war.
The arrangement enabled nearly 33 million metric tons of Ukrainian grain to reach international markets before Russia withdrew in 2023, arguing that obstacles remained for its own food and fertilizer exports.
Russia has maintained that the original agreement did not adequately address restrictions affecting its agricultural exports. Its latest position indicates that Moscow does not want to simply restore the previous framework.
Meanwhile, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin met Tuesday at the Ala Archa State Residence in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit.
During their one-and-a-half-hour one-on-one meeting, the situation surrounding the Black Sea was the main subject of the talks, according to Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov.
The meeting was originally scheduled to last about 30 minutes but ran significantly longer as the two leaders discussed what Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described as complicated issues. Public remarks from the meeting, however, focused largely on broader bilateral ties, including energy, agriculture and tourism, with no breakthrough announced on the grain initiative.
Putin told reporters after the SCO summit that Russia was advancing on the battlefield and had no doubt Ukraine would eventually "crumble," while ruling out negotiations with the country's current leadership, whom he described as "terrorists."
He also acknowledged that Ukrainian drone strikes had caused damage inside Russia and said Moscow was preparing major strikes against Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
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