French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that France was helping Romania to transit the large quantities of cereals blocked in Ukraine in the absence of a
"framework"
allowing them to leave through the Black Sea because of the Russian blockade. .
"We will continue the diplomatic showdown with regard to Russia, with the Secretary General of the United Nations",
to use the port of Odessa as a maritime exit port for seeds (corn, wheat...)
" which are blocked”
, explained the French president on the private television channel TF1, questioned in Kiev.
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But
"because Russia refuses"
, "we are working on another way, which is to go through Romania", Odessa being only "a few tens of kilometers" from the Ukrainian-Romanian border.
Because
“this would allow”
to be able to access in particular the Danube and the railways in order to transport these cereals to international markets, according to him.
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Romania, where Emmanuel Macron paid a visit on Tuesday and Wednesday before going to Kiev, is
“in the process of making the investments”
to
“constitute a kind of liaison point”
, from which “we can much more quickly and massively than we do today to export these cereals".
France
"will help it with our experts, our soldiers, our companies"
, added Emmanuel Macron.
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Without reaching an agreement so far, the UN has been negotiating for several weeks with Moscow, kyiv and Ankara, military guarantors of the use of the Black Sea for civilian ships, an agreement that would allow cereals to leave Ukraine safe and the fertilizers produced by Russia to return to the international market.
If an agreement were reached, it would bring down food prices and alleviate the world food crisis, which is worsening due to the Russian invasion.
On TF1, Emmanuel Macron stressed that his trip to Kiev, criticized by the opposition three days before the second round of the legislative elections, was thus aimed
"to protect our country"
, because
"the prices of petrol, gas and shopping which are increasing, it is linked to this conflict, to the choices that are made every day by Russia to play with the raw materials at its disposal to make them rise and put pressure on us.
