Brussels: After Russia ripped up a Black Sea agreement, the EU agriculture commissioner said on Tuesday that the bloc can assist Ukraine in exporting the majority of its grain through overland routes and could subsidise the cost of transport.

Since Russia last week withdrew from the United Nations-brokered agreement to allow exports by sea, concerns over getting Ukraine's urgently needed supplies to consumers around the world have increased.

Following Moscow's invasion, the EU established so-called "solidarity lanes" for Ukrainian produce last year, primarily through Romania and Poland, to help promote alternate routes to international markets.

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After meeting with the EU's agriculture ministers in Brussels, Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski declared that the Union was "ready to export by the solidarity lanes almost everything."

In order to keep prices low, Wojciechowski said he would put forth a proposal right away to use EU funds to "support the transport costs" of moving Ukrainian produce by road and rail throughout the Union.

Because it would be less expensive to purchase grain from Russia than it would be to purchase grain from Ukraine, there is a chance that Russia will profit from the situation, he explained.

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A significant producer of grains worldwide is Ukraine.
 Concerns about a possible rise in food prices in nations from Latin America to Africa have increased as a result of Russia's decision to withdraw from the Black Sea agreement.

An argument over restrictions on the sales of Ukrainian grain exports in five eastern European countries that have infuriated Kiev has cast a shadow over efforts to increase exports through the EU.

In response to Russia's all-out invasion, the 27-nation bloc removed import taxes from Ukrainian exports in an effort to assist Kyiv in generating crucial funds.

However, EU nations near the border of the agricultural superpower began preventing imports after their farmers complained that an oversupply of grain from Ukraine was driving down prices.

In April, Brussels reached a compromise that permitted the local markets of Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia to forbid sales while maintaining open transit routes for Ukrainian grain to cross their borders.

The five countries have requested that the measures be extended until the end of the year even though they are currently scheduled to expire in mid-September.
Any extension, according to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, is "completely unacceptable and blatantly anti-European."

After Russia pulled out of a deal to send grain via the Black Sea, attention has turned to finding ways for Ukraine to export grain to international markets. This is when his broadside was launched.

At the Tuesday meeting of the EU's agricultural ministers in Brussels, nations from the EU, including Germany and France, echoed Kyiv's opposition.

Cem Ozdemir, the minister of agriculture for Germany, stated that the European Commission, the EU's executive body, must make it clear that any extension is "not possible."
Prior to elections later this year, he insisted that Poland's internal political conflicts should not be resolved "on Ukraine's back."
"There can be no unilateral measures, no individual adventures, only a collective response to the challenge of destabilising the markets," France's minister, Marc Fesneau, stated.

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Wojciechowski met with ministers from the five eastern EU members and assured them that the commission would have a solution by the deadline of September.

Lithuania, an EU member state, has urged the EU to establish new export routes through Baltic ports for Ukrainian grain in order to increase access to international markets