Negotiators have about 24 hours to save a pact that’s enabled Ukraine to export millions of tons of grain and help ease a global food crisis despite the war it is fighting with Russia.
The agreement has been extended twice already. But Russia has threatened to pull out of the arrangement unless a list of its demands are met. These include a lifting of some restrictions on its agricultural exports.
The deal between Kyiv and Moscow was brokered by the United Nations and Turkey last year. Ukraine is a major supplier of wheat, barley, vegetable oil and other food products to Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia.
The United Nations’ World Food Programme has said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has contributed to “acute food insecurity” for over a quarter of a billion people globally. The so-called Black Sea Grain Initiative has allowed nearly 25 million metric tons of food-related exports from Ukraine to reach global markets, according to a March estimate by Martin Griffths, a U.N. humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator. The World Food Programme, he said, sources much of the wheat for its global humanitarian response from Ukraine.
