The UN chief and top EU officials on Thursday welcomed the agreement reached by parties to continue the Black Sea Grain Initiative.

"I welcome the agreement by all parties to continue the Black Sea Grain Initiative to facilitate the safe navigation of export of grain, foodstuffs and fertilizers from Ukraine," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Twitter.

"The initiative demonstrates the importance of discreet diplomacy in finding multilateral solutions," he added.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen congratulated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Guterres on the development.

"Together with EU Solidarity Lanes the UN Black Sea Grain Initiative helps avoid global food shortages and bring down food prices despite Russia’s war," she added on Twitter.

Commending the efforts, European Council President Charles Michel called the agreement "good news" for a world that badly needs access to grain and fertilizers.

On early Thursday, Erdogan announced that the grain deal has been extended for another four months.

"In accordance with the resolution reached by Türkiye, the UN, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine, the Black Sea Grain Initiative was extended for an additional 120 days beginning November 19, 2022, as a result of the quadrilateral discussions hosted by Türkiye," he said on Twitter.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine together with Guterres and Erdogan made a key decision in the global fight against the food crisis.

In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry said: “Moscow has clearly and openly emphasised that the agreements on Ukrainian food and the effective implementation of the Russian-UN Memorandum on the normalisation of Russian agricultural exports is a package deal, and that remains unchanged.”

“We took note of the intensification of the UN Secretariat’s effort to fulfil its obligations in this regard and the information provided to us on the intermediate results of its work to remove obstacles to Russian fertiliser and food exports. All these issues must be resolved within 120 days,” it added.

The statement said that the UN has started efforts toward unblocking some 300,000 tons of the Russian fertilizers “detained” in EU ports, which Russia is donating to developing countries in need.

Meanwhile, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin said in an interview with Rossiya Segodnya news agency that due to the Western sanctions, Russian supplies of fertilizers to world markets decreased by 38% in March-September 2022, compared to last year.

He said importer countries did not receive 8 million tons of fertilizer, which is enough to produce 25 million tons of food to feed 105 million people.

Vershinin said fertilizers that Russia wants to transfer for free to the poorest countries got stuck in Latvia, Estonia, Belgium and the Netherlands.

He noted that it took more than two months to agree on a shipment of 20,000 tons of fertilizers from the Netherlands to Malawi, scheduled for Nov. 21.

However, Latvia, which withholds most of the cargo ships with fertilizers, refuses to allow the transport of fertilizers to the "poorest countries," he added.

Asked about using the Tolyatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline for the transportation of fertilizers, Vershinin said there are legal basis – Istanbul agreements – and technical capability for the resumption of its work.

"It should be noted that we are talking about an exclusively commercial project, which should not be subject to any preconditions," he said, adding that annually, about 2.5 million tons of raw materials were shipped via the pipeline, sufficient for the production of about 12 million tons of fertilizers to provide food for about 100 million people.

About controversies over supplies of Iranian unmanned aerial vehicles to Russia, Vershinin said the West created a "smoke screen" to distract attention from stalled talks on restoring the Iran nuclear deal.

He also said several options for creating a safe zone around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant are being considered, but "it is premature to talk about them publicly."

On July 22, Türkiye, the UN, Russia and Ukraine signed an agreement in Istanbul to resume grain exports from three Ukrainian Black Sea ports, which had been paused in February due to Russia’s war on Ukraine.

The parties were negotiating a possible extension and expansion beyond its Nov. 19 deadline.

More than 10 million tons of grain have been exported from Ukraine since Aug. 1, according to the UN.