I FEEL obliged to comment on the article by Dr. Ana Isabel Sanchez Ruiz, Deputy Head, Delegation of the European Union to the Philippines, dated September 30, 2022. We observe obvious attempts by the representative of the EU to use “creative accounting” in humanitarian issues in order to retouch the picture, apparently hoping that no one wants to go into details.
1. The representative of the EU in the Philippines shamelessly accuses Russia of mining the Black Sea ports, while the Ukrainian side in fact has long admitted its responsibility for blocking them. And it refused the call for mine clearance, formally referring to the possibility of a threat of a Russian landing to liberate city of Odessa.
2. Ms. Ruiz repeats another fake, long since debunked by both the Russian and Ukrainian sides. She claims that Russia broke the Istanbul grain deal “less than 24 hours after signing it by launching an air attack on the port of Odessa.” I would like to remind her that in the seaport of Odessa, the attack from the Russian side hit the territory of a shipyard, a Ukrainian warship that was in the dock, and a warehouse of Harpoon anti-ship missiles supplied by the United States. The granaries were not damaged, as confirmed in a statement by the head of the press center of the defense forces of southern Ukraine, Natalia Gumenyuk. Speculation that the strike was aimed at granaries was meant to blame Russia for the disruption of the Istanbul agreement signed the day before, and to achieve maximum informational effect in the general context of anti-Russian counter-propaganda.
3. Ms. Ruiz credits the EU with the implementation of agreements on the export of grain from Ukrainian ports. But where is the Ukrainian grain really going?
Her article lacks official statistics. Not all recipients of Ukrainian grain in Asia, Africa and the Middle East are among the most vulnerable in terms of food security and receive assistance from the UN World Food Programme. According to the data of the Joint Coordinating Center (JCC), as of September 21 this year, only 5 out of 185 ships loaded with Ukrainian grain and other food products went to the most needy, according to the UN classification, sub-Saharan Africa (Djibouti—where it exported by land transport to Ethiopia and other countries of the Horn of Africa—Kenya, Somalia and Sudan). Another 3 went to countries prone to food insecurity in the Middle East and Asia (Yemen and Bangladesh). The “grain deal” was conceived precisely in the interests of these countries, and not the European Union.
No matter what the EU leaders say, you can’t fool the statistics. According to the JCC, as of September 21 this year, 93 out of the 185 mentioned vessels headed for the European Union (https://un.org/en/black-sea-grain-initiative/vessel-movements). The EU accounts for about 40 percent of the total supply. So, whatever you think, it is the European Union, and not the poorest countries in the world, that is the largest beneficiary of the deal on the export of Ukrainian grain. The EU leadership, before starting to mislead the world community, should have checked the numbers more carefully.
The basis of supplies from Ukraine is by no means wheat, which the EU was going to “feed the whole world,” but fodder varieties of corn and soybeans, on the import of which the EU livestock industry largely depends.
As for the 10 million tons of Ukrainian food exported to the EU by land in the framework of the EU initiative “Solidarity Lanes,” this is still the case—it is not clear where and in what quantity it ended up. The European Union shyly avoids disclosing relevant data.
4. The EU itself, with its ill-conceived energy policy and unilateral sanctions against Russia and Belarus, provoked a global shortage of fertilizers. In Brussels, with the aim of limiting export earnings to the Russian budget, they did not bother to consider that the Russian Federation ranks first in the world in the export of nitrogen fertilizers, second in potash and third in phosphorus fertilizers.
Russian fertilizer supplies turned out to be significantly complicated by the problems with payment created by the EU sanctions (including due to targeted restrictions and disconnection of leading Russian banks from SWIFT) and logistics. This is aggravated by “overcompliance” of European economic operators. Business fears administrative and even criminal prosecution for violations of the sanctions regime.
Serious restrictions on the supply of Russian fertilizers to third countries created targeted (“personal”) EU sanctions against shareholders and management of Russian producers and exporters of these products. As a result of this, about 300,000 tons of fertilizers got stuck in the ports of EU member states, which Russia is ready to transfer free of charge to developing countries in dire need of this product. But even this goodwill initiative is blocked by the collective West.
Nina Prakapovich
Press-Attaché
Embassy of the Russian
Federation in the Philippines