Putin Wants To Revise 'Cheating' Ukraine Grain Export Deal

President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia and the developing world had been "cheated" by a UN-brokered Ukrainian grain export deal, vowing to look to revise its terms to limit the countries that can receive shipments, Vladimir Soldatkin reported for Reuters.

Photo Insert: Putin asserted that Ukrainian grain exports were not going to the world's poorest countries as originally intended.

Speaking at an economic forum in the city of Vladivostok in Russia's Far East, Putin took aim at the deal, brokered by Turkey and the United Nations, saying Ukrainian grain exports were not going to the world's poorest countries as originally intended.

"What we see is a brazen deception ... a deception by the international community of our partners in Africa, and other countries that are in dire need of food. It's just a scam," Putin said.

In his strongest comments on the topic since the deal was reached in July, Putin warned of a global food crisis if the situation were not addressed and said he would contact Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan to discuss amending the deal to restrict which countries can receive shipments.

"It is obvious that with this approach, the scale of food problems in the world will only increase ... which can lead to an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe," he said.

Putin said, without citing a source, that only two of 87 ships, carrying 60,000 tons of products, went to poor countries, as he accused the West of acting as colonial states. "That's how it is - they were once colonizers and have remained so on the inside," he said of European countries.

"Almost all the grain exported from Ukraine is sent not to the poorest developing countries, but to European Union (EU) countries," Putin told an economic forum in the eastern city of Vladivostok on Wednesday.

UN data shows that Turkey, which is not part of the EU, has been the most frequent single destination for shipments from Ukraine, with cargoes going to China, India, Egypt, Yemen, Somalia, and Djibouti as well.

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