According to Reuters, UN Secretary-General Guterres offered Russian President Putin ‘SWIFT’ in exchange for extending the grain deal.
United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres offered Russian President Vladimir Putin SWIFT in exchange for extending the Black Sea Grain Agreement, sources told the UK-based Reuters agency. According to the report, Guterres offered Putin to extend the agreement, which expires on July 17, in exchange for giving Russia’s agricultural bank access to the international payment messaging system SWIFT.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, on the other hand, spoke about President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s statement that Putin had ‘some proposals for the continuation of the grain corridor agreement. Lavrov said that he was ‘not aware of any new proposals’, adding, “Turkey was interested in helping to process our grain and participating in a scheme that would allow us to independently help developing countries.”
Lavrov said that, in general, these proposals could consist of proposals that Putin and Erdogan had previously discussed in person, and could be related to the readiness of both Russia and Turkey to carry out preferential grain shipments, especially wheat, to needy developing countries independently of various agreements.