NATO will step up safety in Black Sea area after Russia declares elements are unsafe for transport

NATO stated Wednesday it was stepping up surveillance of the Black Sea area because it condemned Russia’s exit from a landmark deal that allowed Ukrainian grain exports by means of the Black Sea.

The announcement got here after a gathering of the NATO-Ukraine Council, which was launched at a NATO summit in Lithuania earlier this month to coordinate cooperation between the army alliance and Kyiv.

The Kremlin doubled down on terminating the grain deal by attacking Ukrainian ports and declaring extensive areas of the Black Sea unsafe for transport.

“Allies and Ukraine strongly condemned Russia’s decision to withdraw from the Black Sea grain deal and its deliberate attempts to stop Ukraine’s agricultural exports on which hundreds of millions of people worldwide depend. … NATO and allies are stepping up surveillance and reconnaissance in the Black Sea region, including with maritime patrol aircraft and drones,” learn the NATO assertion.

Last week, Russia halted the breakthrough wartime deal that allowed grain to stream from Ukraine to nations in Africa, the Middle East and Asia the place starvation is a rising menace and excessive meals costs have pushed extra folks into poverty.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated the Black Sea Grain Initiative can be suspended till calls for to get Russian meals and fertilizer to the world are met.

The NATO assertion criticized Moscow’s declaration that elements of the Black Sea’s worldwide waters have been “temporarily unsafe” for navigation.

“Allies noted that Russia’s new warning area in the Black Sea, within Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone, has created new risks for miscalculation and escalation, as well as serious impediments to freedom of navigation,” the NATO assertion stated.

The suspension of the Black Sea Grain Initiative marks the tip of an accord that the U.N. and Turkey brokered final summer season to permit shipments of meals from the Black Sea area after Russia’s invasion of its neighbor worsened a world meals disaster. The initiative is credited with serving to cut back hovering costs of wheat, vegetable oil and different world meals commodities.