Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday that Russia has used Asian and African countries as “exchange currency” by blocking the export of grain from Ukraine during the war between Moscow and kyiv.
Russia uses the inhabitants of Asia and Africa as “exchange currency” by blocking the export of grain from Ukrainewhich stores 22 million tons of grain in its warehouses, the Ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelenski, denounced on Monday.
“Russia’s blockade of our exports is destabilizing the situation on a global scale. As a result, food is becoming more and more expensive in different countries. Consequently, there is a threat of famine. In Africa, in Asia, in some European countries ·, Zelensky said in his usual evening speech to his compatriots.
The Russian army blockades Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea and seized part of the Ukrainian coast of the Sea of Azov, thus “We cannot export 22 million tons of grains that are already in warehouses in our country. This is the volume that was going to enter the foreign market,” the president added.
This threat, he warned, could turn into a new migration crisis, which is what “the Russian leadership clearly wants. They are deliberately creating this problem. For the whole of Europe to face difficulties. And so that Ukraine does not receive billions of dollars for its exports. These are the billions that our economy really needs right now.”
According to Zelenski, with it, “The inhabitants of African and Asian countries are used by the Russian state simply as currency.”
The Russian invaders, according to the Ukrainian president, “have already stolen at least half a million tons of grain and are now looking for ways to sell it illegally somewhere. To sell it in order to make money with what was stolen and maintain the deficit in the legal market.”
Zelensky and the situation in Donbas
Regarding the armed conflict due to the Russian invasion, Zelensky insisted that the situation in Donbas, in the east of the country, “remains extremely difficult.”
The Russian army, he added, tries to gather “overwhelming forces in certain areas to put more and more pressure on our defenders. There, in Donbas, the maximum combat power of the Russian army is now concentrated.
Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Kurakhov, Slovyansk and some other settlements “remain key targets for the occupants in this direction,” he said.
In addition, he mentioned that Russian troops shelled Kharkov again, as well as the Sumy region.
“The fight for the Kherson region continues. Step by step, we are liberating our land and gradually approaching the point where Russia will have to lay down its arms, count all its dead, and move on to diplomacy,” Zelensky noted.
On the other hand, he expressed his condolences for the death of the French journalist Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff while traveling in a humanitarian convoy in eastern Ukraine, and who became the 32nd fatality of media representatives since the Russian invasion on 24 December. last February, recalled the ruler.