Foreign Minister of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba has said, while commenting on media reports about possible sanction concessions to Russia for the sake of its return to the Black Sea Grain Initiative, that he knows that "some forces" support such concessions.

"The issue of 'nullifying' sanctions cannot be on agenda in principle. Because if we 'nullify' anything right now, then tomorrow Russia will bombard another port and start to blackmail the world with other demands," he said at a joint press conference with his German counterpart Annalena Baerbock in Kyiv on Monday.

Kuleba also said that he has discussed with Baerbock the sanctions against Russia and the grain deal.

"I know that some forces support such concessions to Russia. I am not saying that Annalena supports them, but there are such forces. I said clearly that if someone wants to allow the family of [Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai] Patrushev, who hates the West and wants to destroy it, to earn a couple of hundreds of million dollars on Rosselkhozbank, then you can connect it to the SWIFT system. What kind of respect will these people have for themselves after that – it is hard for me to imagine," the Ukrainian minister said.

Earlier, Bild reported that the UN is in "secret talks" with Russia on a deal under which the main sanctions introduced after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine will be canceled.