The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, says Russia will remain a “responsible supplier” of food and grain to African nations and take Ukraine’s place as an international supplier of grain during the Brics Summit in South Africa.
According to Putin, Russia has a stronger capacity to replace Ukraine as Africa’s grain supplier because Ukraine only sells 3% of its grain to developing countries.
“Russia has been deliberately obstructed in the supply of grain and fertilisers abroad and, at the same time, hypocritically blamed for the current crisis situation in the world market. We have repeatedly drawn attention to the fact that in a year under the deal, a total of 32.8m tonnes of cargo have been exported from Ukraine, of which over 70% have reached high- and upper-middle-income countries, including the European Union … only about 3% have gone to the least developed countries, less than 1 million metric tonnes,” he stated.
“I have repeatedly said that our country has the capacity to replace Ukrainian grain both commercially and as free aid to needy countries, especially since our harvest is again expected to be perfect this year,” he added.
Putin also said the use of US dollars in trade between Brics nations was decreasing as the countries moved towards national currencies and away from dollars in an irreversible process of de-dollarization.
The share of US dollar export and import operations within Brics is declining. Last year, it was only 28.7%, and in fact, this summit is to discuss the details of the entire range of issues related to the transition to national currencies in all areas of economic cooperation between our five nations.
However, the White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, also said the USA does not see the Brics bloc of nations turning into a geopolitical rival to the US or anyone else but rather a diverse collection of countries with different views on critical issues.
