Former European Commission President Durão Barroso condemned on Tuesday Russia’s suspension of the grain deal, warned that the price paid to the most vulnerable is “exceedingly severe” and hoped Moscow will reconsider its stance.
Speaking on the sidelines of the 6th Eurafrican Forum, which he is chairing and which started this Tuesday in Nova SBE, in Carcavelos (municipality of Cascais), Durão Barroso said Moscow’s decision is “absolutely reprehensible” after Moscow banned the Black Sea Grains abandoned Initiative, taken over by Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the United Nations, claiming that its demands had not been met.
“To make African countries and not just African countries, developing countries, pay a very high price for a problem they did not create is very serious,” declared the former leader of the European Commission, former Portuguese Prime Minister and who was non- executive chairman of financial group Golden Sachs, to which he remains affiliated, in part of an interview given to Lusa, which will be released in full on Wednesday.
Durão Barroso expressed his wish that the suspension of the agreement, which allowed the export of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea, in the midst of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, be reversed, a possibility the Kremlin will keep open if its terms are accepted. .
“I know you see a lot of pressure from some countries, not just Western countries,” he noted, asking “to raise the voice of the most affected countries, because – it is that old expression in different languages –, when there is a great problem among the great, it is the smallest who suffer”.
The co-chairman of the Global Alliance for Vaccines (GAVI), set up in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, mentioned the case of African countries “that have nothing to do with this war or are not directly involved in it” and those “are the ones who suffer the consequences of this brutal way”.
Durão Barroso recalled that the initiative for the war came from Moscow and that the consequences of the conflict stem from the “illegal action that was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine”, where “there is an aggressor and an attacked” and this is what , he stressed, it is important to explain, because “there can sometimes be a tendency in the so-called ‘global south’ to place all the responsibility on Europeans or Europe”.
“No”, he insisted, “the responsibility lies with those who launched this war and this aggression”.
Russia opposed the extension of the agreement as long as its demands on trade in its own agricultural products are not met, hampered by sanctions against its banks, and denounced the extension of the agreement.
The agreement on Ukrainian grains has allowed more than 30 million tons of grains and agricultural products to be marketed despite the ongoing war in Ukraine since the Russian invasion on February 22, 2022.
In response, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that “every effort should be made to use this corridor” in the Black Sea even without Russia.
The suspension prompted comments from UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who warned that hundreds of millions of people will pay for Russia’s decision to break the agreement.
Turkey’s president, in turn, said he believed his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, “wants to keep” the deal.
“We will take steps in that direction, with an appeal to Putin, without waiting for August,” he said.
Moscow’s backsliding on the renewal of the Black Sea Grains Initiative has drawn strong criticism from some of Kiev’s key allies, such as the European Commission, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Germany and Portugal, and also warned of its impact on millions of people living in vulnerable countries.
Source: DN
