MOSCOW (Dispatches) --
Russia says the United States is provoking a food crisis in Ukraine by depriving the ex-Soviet country of its grain reserves.
Since the onset of Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24, waves of unprecedented sanctions from the United States and its European allies have been imposed on Moscow. They are also pouring advanced weapons into Ukraine in a move that risks prolonging the conflict.
The ongoing war, and its subsequent blockade on Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, has endangered the world food supply by preventing Ukraine from shipping its agricultural products.
Ukraine, one of the world’s biggest grain producers, is a major exporter of corn, barley, sunflower oil and rapeseed oil. However, it now cannot export its grain via its Black Sea ports due to the war, which has reduced its grain exports this month by more than half compared to a year ago.
On Saturday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned that the U.S. is triggering a food crisis in Ukraine by stripping the country from its grain reveres.
“U.S. President Joe Biden’s statement on May 10 about the need to look for opportunities to export 20 million tones of grain from Ukraine coincided with the signing of the Lend-Lease law for Ukraine. Turns out, Kiev will pay for weapons with wheat,” she said at a press conference.
“In fact, the U.S. itself provokes food crisis in Ukraine, depriving it of grain reserves,” Zakharova said, responding to statements by official representatives of foreign countries about the Russian blockade of the Black Sea.
Russia and Ukraine together produce almost 30 percent of the global wheat supply.
The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), which purchases almost 50 percent of its grain from Ukraine, feeds some 125 million people around the world.
Zakharova said the U.S. and its European allies have already expressed intentions to export 20 million tons of grain from Ukraine within two and a half months, purportedly for their transportation to African and Middle Eastern countries in order to prevent a food crisis.
“However, in reality, grain is transported to warehouses in Europe. Rail, road, and river routes are organized for its delivery to destinations in Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Romania, and Bulgaria,” the Russian diplomat added.
“The West’s attempts to pin all troubles on a special military operation and accuse Russia of blocking foreign ships in the ports of the Black and Azov Seas are absolutely groundless,” Zakharova stressed.
Refuting claims that the ongoing war has caused a price surge in agricultural products around the world, she said prices for such products rose in 2020, which is by no means the result of Russia’s current operation in Ukraine.
“The pandemic has caused major disruptions to supply chains and significantly increased the price of food transportation services,” Zakharova argued.
She also cited experts from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization as repeatedly saying that the prices of such products reached record-breaking figures before February, denouncing the West’s anti-Russian sanctions as the “main catalyst” of the existing negative trends.
On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi that Moscow “is ready to make a significant contribution to overcoming the food crisis through the export of grain and fertilizer on the condition that politically motivated restrictions imposed by the West are lifted”.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said the West “must cancel the unlawful decisions that hamper chartering ships and exporting grain”.
World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has said about 25 million tons of Ukrainian grain is in storage and another 25 million tons could be harvested next month.
European countries have tried to ease the crisis by moving grain out of the country by rail — but trains can carry only a small fraction of what Ukraine produces, and ships are needed for the bulk of the exports.
At the same time, the Russian Defense Ministry proposed corridors to allow foreign ships to leave ports along the Black Sea, as well as Mariupol on the Sea of Azov.
Mikhail Mizintsev, who heads Russia’s National Defense Control Center, said 70 foreign vessels from 16 countries are in six ports on the Black Sea, including Odesa, Kherson and Mykolaiv. He did not specify how many might be ready to carry food.