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MOSCOW. – Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said yesterday global food prices will rise further if western nations intensify economic pressure on Moscow.
Russian Agriculture Minister Dmitry Patrushev told a meeting chaired by Putin that Russia, a major global fertilizer producer, would continue to service its export obligations for global agriculture markets.
“Russia and Belarus are some of the biggest suppliers of mineral fertilisers. If they continue to create problems for the financing and logistics of the delivery of our goods, then prices will rise and this will affect the final product, food products,.
Putin said yesterday that Western sanctions were illegimate and Russia would calmly solve the problems arising from them. He said Western governments were deceiving their own people.
The Russian president had also said the West was blaming Russia for its own mistakes with US ban on oil.
Russia’s two-week-long war in Ukraine has forced two million people to flee the country, half of them children.
The foreign ministers of Ukraine and Russia met yesterday in Turkey in their highest-level talks thus far, but it appeared little progress was made at the meeting.
Putin also said Moscow – a major energy producer which supplies a third of Europe’s gas – would continue to meet its contractual obligations.
Speaking calmly, the Kremlin leader said; “It is clear that at such moments people’s demand for certain groups of goods always increases, but we have no doubt that we will solve all these problems while working in a calm fashion.
“Gradually, people will orient themselves, they will understand that there are simply no events that we cannot close off and solve.”
Speaking at the same meeting, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Russia had taken measures to limit the outflow of capital and that the country would service its external debts in roubles.
“Over the last two weeks Western countries have in essence waged an economic and financial war against Russia,”
He said the West had defaulted on its obligations to Russia by freezing its gold and foreign currency reserves. It was trying to halt foreign trade.
“In these conditions the priority is for us to stabilise the situation in the financial system,” Siluanov said. – Agencies
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