Kremlin denies blame for mounting food crisis

LONDON, June 3 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin met African Union leaders on Friday and the Kremlin said he would tell them that Moscow was not to blame for the growing food crisis affecting their continent.  
State TV showed Putin greeting Senegalese President Macky Sall, chairman of the AU, and Moussa Faki Mahamat, chairman of the AU Commission, at the start of talks in the southern Russian resort of Sochi.  

Russia’s army has seized much of Ukraine’s southern coastline in the course of its 100-day war and its warships control access to the country’s Black Sea ports. But it continues to blame Ukraine and the West for the resulting halt in Ukrainian grain exports.  

“With a high degree of probability and confidence, I can assume that the president will give exhaustive explanations of his vision of the situation with Ukrainian grain,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.  
“The president will tell our African friends the real state of affairs, he will explain once again what is happening there, who has mined the ports, what is needed for grain to go, that no-one on the Russian side is blocking these ports,” Peskov said.