Brussels (EFE).- The foreign ministers of the European Union (EU) regretted this Thursday that Russia has withdrawn from the agreement to facilitate the export of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea and advocated continuing with its military support and the transport of grain through its territory as an alternative to the sea route.
“The ministers will have to discuss how to proceed, but there is only one solution: increase military support for Ukraine,” said the high representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, before the press upon his arrival at the Council of community ministers, which today once again addressed support for Kiev.
Borrell considered the situation “very serious” after Russia not only abandoned that agreement, but also bombed the infrastructure and silos of the Ukrainian port of Odessa for three consecutive nights.
“The answer can only be one, apart from rhetoric: provide more military resources,” he settled.
In his opinion, it will be necessary for the EU to expand the so-called “solidarity lanes”, the alternative routes through its territory by which it is helping Ukraine to export its cereal, to avoid generating a “huge food crisis in the world”.
“This is not just another attack on Ukraine, it is an attack on the people, the poorest people in the world,” German Minister Annalena Baerbock said, referring to the “hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions,” who “urgently” need grain from Ukraine.
Russia requirements
To stay in the cereal agreement, Russia had demands such as the connection of its agricultural bank, Rosseljozbank, to the SWIFT international banking system or the lifting of sanctions on spare parts for agricultural machinery.
The EU wants to hear from the UN what Russia is asking for before discussing what to do about the sanctions it has imposed on it, according to a senior EU official.
“From the EU, we have made offers on how we can approach the legitimate suggestions of Russia, (…) but it is clear to me that now we have a situation in which Moscow once again uses hunger as a weapon,” said the Austrian minister, Alexander Schallenberg.
“The Europeans, and of course Spain, are going to do everything possible so that this agreement is resumed,” said the Spanish minister, José Manuel Albares, before the start of the first Foreign Council meeting that is being held under this six-month Spanish presidency of the Council of the Union.
Fund for Ukraine
For now, the foreign ministers of the European Union supported this Thursday the plan to dedicate 500 million euros from the community budget and more flexible measures to stimulate the production of weapons in the EU, especially artillery ammunition, missiles and their components.
The law was approved as a point without debate in the session held today in Brussels.
The objective is to facilitate the replenishment of community arsenals, depleted by the massive shipment of ammunition to Ukraine so that it can defend itself against the Russian invasion.
ASAP, as this law in support of ammunition production in Europe has been baptized, corresponds to the third way of the European plan to donate one million rounds of ammunition to Ukraine in a year, in addition to those that refer, in parallel, to the delivery of all possible stocks that the Member States have in their possession and to place common orders to the industry so that they are quickly replaced.