STOCKHOLM - U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday he was hopeful of a solution to alleviate the impact of the war in Ukraine on global food supplies, but cautioned any agreement was still some way off.

"I think that there is progress, but we are not yet there. These are complex things and the fact that everything is interlinked, makes the negotiation particularly complex," he told a news conference with Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson in Stockholm.

With Russia controlling or effectively blockading all Ukrainian Black Sea ports, grain shipments from Ukraine have stalled since the invasion began while Moscow has blamed Western sanctions for disrupting exports of both grain and fertilizer.

(Reporting by Niklas Pollard and Simon Johnson)