During her visit to Ukraine, Development Minister Svenja Schulze asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to allow grain deliveries via the Ukrainian ports.

"Putin is to blame for the fact that there are now possible famines in many countries," said Schulze on Friday in the Kiev suburb of Borodyanka.

Schulze dismissed Russian accusations that Western sanctions were provoking a global hunger crisis.

Food is excluded from the sanctions, emphasized the minister, who was the second German government member to travel to Ukraine.

"But what Putin is actually doing is that he is bombing the ports and thereby preventing food from being exported from Ukraine at all."

That has to stop, Schulze demanded.

Russia had called the partial lifting of Western sanctions a condition for solving the global food crisis.

At the same time, Moscow rejected accusations of blocking Ukrainian ports.

These are inaccessible due to sea mines laid by Ukraine itself.

The Russian Ministry of Defense published time windows and corridors for the possible exit of foreign ships from Ukrainian waters for the first time on Thursday.

However, Kyiv is responsible for the security of the port exit.

Schulze: Scholz is in constant contact with Selenskyj

During her visit to Borodjanka, Schulze assured the people of civil aid from Germany.

185 million euros for emergency aid measures have already been approved, she said.

Specifically, apartments and power lines are to be built.

“Ukrainians simply need water and electricity.

Those who fled inside Ukraine need a roof over their heads, the children need to be able to go back to school and support is needed for all of that.”

Germany will remain a partner for the next few years, she said in front of houses destroyed by Russian air strikes.

"But we must not wait until the war is over, we must start helping and building again now."

The emergency aid funds are to go, among other things, to the reconstruction of the destroyed houses.

But people also need garbage collection and waste management.

The development ministry will continue to cooperate closely with the affected communities in the future, she said in an interview with Borodjanka's mayor Georgi Jerko.

Asked about the visit from Chancellor Olaf Scholz expected by Kyiv, Schulze only said that he was in constant contact with President Volodymyr Zelenskyj.

Unlike several other Western heads of state and government, Scholz has so far refrained from visiting Ukraine.

Two and a half weeks ago, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) was the first member of the government to travel to Kyiv since the beginning of the war.

At the beginning of May, opposition leader Friedrich Merz (CDU) and Bundestag President Bärbel Bas (SPD) visited Kyiv as high-ranking German politicians.

During her visit on Friday, Schulze wanted to meet Prime Minister Denys Schmyhal and his deputy Iryna Wereschtschuk.