Agriculture Minister Dmitry Patrushev announced on Friday that Russia plans to commence grain deliveries to African nations in approximately one to six weeks, according to the Interfax news agency.
“We are now finalising all the documents. I think that within a month – or a month and a half – they will start,” Interfax quoted Patrushev as saying.
In July, President Vladimir Putin informed African leaders that he would provide them with tens of thousands of tons of grain as a gift, despite Western sanctions that he claimed had made it more challenging for Moscow to export its grain and fertilisers.
“We will be ready to provide Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Mali, Somalia, Central African Republic and Eritrea with 25-50,000 tonnes of free grain each in the next three to four months,” Putin told a Russia-Africa summit at the time.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres referred to the pledged grain as “a handful of donations.”
Russia in July quit a year-old agreement that had allowed Ukraine, one of the world’s biggest exporters, to ship grain from its Black Sea ports.
