Moscow will make grave mistake if it does not extend grain deal – Italy's foreign minister

Moscow will make a grave mistake if it does not extend the Black Sea Grain Initiative, because this grain deal concerns the population of Africa and affects the weakest nations.

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani told this to journalists on Thursday, May 4, Ukrinform reports, citing Sky TG24.

"A great country or the one that wants to be such cannot use the problems of weaker peoples - I mean the African peoples - to try to achieve more on the military front. It is not correct, it is not right. It would be a grave mistake to do so," he said.

According to Tajani, there is no need to make the situation worse. "I am thinking, for example, of the absolute need to create a free zone around the Zaporizhzhia [nuclear power] plant. I am thinking of strengthening green corridors to send grain and cereals to Africa. These are two concrete issues on which it is right to be able to find an agreement," Tajani said.

A meeting on the extension of the Black Sea Grain Initiative at the level of the deputy defense ministers of Ukraine, Turkey and Russia will take place in Istanbul on May 5.

On April 26, Russia once again suspended the work of the "grain corridor."

According to Ukraine's Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food, over the past ten months, Ukraine has exported more than 41.5 million tonnes of grain and leguminous crops.

Photo: ANSA