Here are Russia’s demands for the grain deal.

"For months, Russia has complained about the agreement brokered by the United Nations and Turkey that has allowed Ukraine to export millions of tons of grain from its Black Sea ports, past a de facto blockade by Moscow’s warships. On Monday, the Kremlin said it was pausing its participation in the deal until its conditions are met.

When the pact was signed in July, it was accompanied by assurances that Russia’s agricultural products and fertilizers would also make it to world markets.

But Russian officials have repeatedly complained that while the deal has allowed Ukraine’s food exports to get to markets, Western sanctions against Russia continued to affect the sale of Russia’s agricultural products.

Here is a look at the agreement and Russia’s demands.

What is the agreement?

The Black Sea Grain Initiative was established to alleviate a global food crisis that developed after the beginning of the events in Ukraine last year, when Russia’s control of the waterways blocked ships from carrying Ukraine’s grain out of its ports on the Black Sea. Ukraine is one of the world’s biggest grain exporters, and the blockage swiftly sent grain prices soaring. The original agreement allowed exports to resume in August 2022.

The deal has come within days of expiring twice before, in November and in March. Each time, Russia agreed to extend it, but the March extension came with a warning: Moscow said the renewed deal would expire in 60 days if the United Nations failed to resolve “systemic problems” around Russian agricultural exports.

What are Russia’s demands?

These are the demands that Russia’s Foreign Ministry listed in its statement in April 13, which have since been the focus of negotiations:

•           Reconnect Russia’s agricultural bank to the SWIFT payment system. The state-owned Russian Agricultural Bank is one of several institutions barred by Western sanctions from SWIFT, an international messaging service that is critical for cross-border payments.

•           Lift restrictions on maritime insurance, and on the supply of spare parts used in agricultural machinery. The United States, Britain and the European Union say they have already excluded Russian agricultural goods from their sanctions, but Russian companies have repeatedly complained that Western banks, insurance providers and shipping companies still refuse to work with them, for fear of overstepping the boundaries of the exemptions or of attracting bad publicity.

•           End sanctions against fertilizer companies and people linked to them. Dmitry Mazepin, the founder of the major fertilizer producer Uralchem, is among the businessmen on the international sanctions lists.

•           Restore an ammonia pipeline that crosses Ukraine. For months, Russia has demanded that it be allowed to resume exporting ammonia through the Tolyatti-Odesa pipeline, which connects chemical factories in the Russian industrial city of Tolyatti with Ukraine’s Pivdennyi Port, near Odesa. A section of the pipeline that runs through Kharkiv region in northeastern Ukraine was damaged in June, according to Ukrainian and Russian officials.”