António Guterres made the appeal at a UN Food Systems summit in Rome, Italy, on Monday, the Reuters news agency reported.
The UN chief said: “I call on the Russian Federation to return to the implementation of the Black Sea Initiative," according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
He added: “I urge the global community to stand united for effective solutions in this essential effort."
Guterres warned: "With the termination of the Black Sea Initiative, the most vulnerable will pay the highest price.”
He said that global wheat and corn prices were already starting to rise.
The UN chief stated: "When food prices rise, everybody pays for it. This is especially devastating for vulnerable countries struggling to feed their people."
Since Russia quit the deal on July 17 and began attacking Ukrainian food-exporting ports on the Black Sea and Danube river, global wheat and corn futures have risen sharply, the Reuters news agency reported.
Guterres emphasised that both Russia and Ukraine were “essential to global food security,'' as the world’s major exporters of wheat, barley, maize and sunflower oil, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
He declared: “I remain committed to facilitating unimpeded access to global markets for food products and fertiliser from both Ukraine and the Russian Federation and to deliver the food security every person deserves.”
The Black Sea Grain Initiative was brokered by the UN and Turkey last summer to combat a global food crisis worsened by Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Reuters news agency reported.
On July 11, the UN’s Guterres wrote to Russian President Vladimir Putin in a last-ditch effort to save the agreement.
He proposed that Moscow prolong the deal in exchange for connecting a subsidiary of Russia’s Agricultural Bank, Rosselkhozbank, to the SWIFT global payments system, which has been a key demand by the Kremlin, according to Reuters.
Russian attack on Ukraine’s Kostiantynivka kills child, injures six people
Meanwhile, a child was killed and six people injured in a Russian strike on Ukraine’s eastern city of Kostiantynivka on Monday, Polish state news agency reported.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of Ukraine’s Donetsk region, said on the Telegram social messaging app that at around 7 p.m. Russian forces had fired Smerch rockets at a “local pond where people were resting,” according to news outlets.
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, launching the largest military campaign in Europe since World War II.
Tuesday is day 517 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
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Source: PAP, Reuters, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, The Guardian
