President Joko Widodo, who chairs the G20 this year, spoke at a press conference alongside his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin after a bilateral meeting in Moscow on Thursday.
His trip follows a visit to kyiv on Wednesday where he met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
“I really appreciate President Putin who said earlier that he will guarantee the security of food and fertilizer supplies from Russia and Ukraine. This is good news,” said the Indonesian president, who is widely known as Jokowi.
“For the sake of humanity, I also support the efforts of the United Nations to reintegrate Russian foodstuffs and fertilizers and Ukrainian foodstuffs into the global supply chain,” he added.
Jokowi said he urged G7 leaders, at a meeting he attended in Germany this week, to ensure that sanctions against Russia do not affect food and fertilizer supplies.
The war in Ukraine has caused major disruptions in world trade, with grain and wheat prices soaring amid blockades of Ukrainian seaports and sanctions on Russian commodities such as oil, gas and fertilizers.
Speaking alongside Jokowi Moscow, President Putin denied that Russia was blocking Ukrainian grain exports.
“The Ukrainian military mined the approaches to their ports,” he said. “No one is stopping them from clearing the mines and we guarantee the safe shipment of grain from there.”
As G20 chair this year, Jokowi has sought to mend the divisions in the group exposed by the war in Ukraine and threats to boycott the summit if Russia attends, as well as to leverage his country’s non-aligned position to push for peace.[L4N2YE0Q5]
On Thursday, he said he had conveyed a message from Zelenskiy Putin, and said Indonesia remained ready to be a “bridge of communication” between the two leaders. He did not specify the content of the message.
Separately, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said she had phone calls with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, among others, about the food crisis and possible ways to reintegrate Ukraine and Russia into the global food chain.