Brussels intends to propose a way to circumvent the Russian blockade of the Black Sea to export some food by land, according to POLITICO Europe,
KYIV. UkraineGate , 11 , May , 2022 | Economy .
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“On Wednesday, the European Commission will announce a plan to significantly increase the amount of food that the agricultural heavyweight Ukraine can deliver to starving countries by road and rail by the EU,” the newspaper said.
It is noted that this is intended to help combat the problem raised by President Volodymyr Zelensky this week, noting that the blockade of the port of Odessa was probably something “not seen since World War II” and that dozens of countries are now facing deficit due to Russian aggression.
EU Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski unveiled an “action plan” at the opening of a UN food agency meeting in his native Poland, saying the bloc should counter Russia’s deliberate destruction of Ukraine’s agriculture by expanding export channels and rejecting Moscow’s attempts to portray itself as a humanitarian player. feeds the world in the face of the growing food crisis.
“It is necessary to organize alternative corridors for exports, especially for wheat and corn, because Ukraine has a lot of reserves,” Wojciechowski said in an interview with POLITICO. “We want to ensure food supply chains for Europe and the rest of the world,” he said earlier in the FAO event.
The EU Commissioner also sharply warned that Russia will seek to turn the situation in its favor when it comes to food. He warned that Moscow could not only steal Ukraine’s share of the world market for goods such as corn and wheat, but also try to highlight its image by presenting itself as a charitable supplier to poor countries, while blocking Ukraine’s own supplies.
“This is Russian propaganda. They are deliberately destroying Ukraine’s (agricultural) potential … and the next steps will be that they are friends of the world and pretend to be saviors,” he said.
“The main solution is the corridors to the (Polish) ports of the Baltic Sea,” said the European Commissioner, referring to Gdansk and Gdynia.
He downplayed the possibility of creating humanitarian corridors for the export of food from the Black Sea, calling it “a possible but not the main solution.”
Wojciechowski said many European Commission units were involved in drafting the plan, but he took the initiative after talks with Ukrainian Agriculture Minister Mykola Solsky in Lithuania last month.
Addition
Ukraine and Russia are giant exporters of food to Africa and the Middle East, dependent on imports, but due to Russia’s attack from land and sea, millions of tons of Ukrainian grain are stuck in elevators and can not be delivered by ships from the Black Sea. less than 80 percent of Ukrainian food exports.
The Ministry of Agrarian Policy said earlier that the Russian occupiers had already stolen 400-500 thousand tons of grain in Ukraine, which is sent to the temporarily occupied Crimea. And that the Foreign Ministry is working on arrests and confiscations of grain with the help of Western partners and will announce them soon.
Source: Ukrgate
