On July 18, Russia officially suspended its participation in the grain deal and again blocked food shipments through Ukrainian ports to starving countries. The Russian Federation also withdrew its shipping security guarantees, restoring the regime to a temporarily dangerous area in the northwestern part of the Black Sea. The Russian authorities broke the agreements, thus limiting the world’s food supplies.
Moscow’s refusal to renew the grain deal could lead to a sharp increase in food prices in the short term, which will affect the poor population of African countries. In this way, Russia is trying to blackmail African countries with a famine on the eve of the Russia-Africa summit to be held in St. Petersburg on July 27-28. This is a way to put pressure on African countries to support Moscow in its aggression against Ukraine. Therefore, the best reaction of African leaders would be to refuse to travel to Russia.
In addition, Putin does not give up trying to create an artificial famine in order to provoke a wave of refugees to Western countries. According to the UN, some 1.7 billion people face poverty and hunger due to the disruption of the food transport and logistics system as a result of the Russian blockade of Ukrainian ports.
As a result, the Kremlin exposed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who recently publicly assured that he had agreed with Putin to extend the grain deal. Ukraine, for its part, is not giving up on its own grain deal with Turkey and the UN. Kiev continues to rely on international support to extend the sea corridor, even without Russia’s participation. Ukraine is also developing alternative routes for the export of its agricultural products, even if they cannot fully compensate for the use of the sea route. Only this year Ukraine’s export potential is estimated at over 40 million tons of grain.
The whole problem with the extension of the grain agreement resulted solely from the position of Russia, which constantly set a number of conditions, primarily related to the lifting of Western sanctions against Russian banks and enterprises. In particular, the Kremlin demanded that the West connect Rosselkhozbank to the SWIFT system, resume deliveries of agricultural machinery and spare parts, lift restrictions on insurance of these products, lift the ban on port access, restore the Togliatti-Odesa ammonia pipeline, and unblock the assets and accounts of Russian companies associated with food and fertilizers. It is worth noting that the grain agreement gave Russia an unprecedented role in overseeing shipping in the Black Sea, despite the fact that it holds rights to only 10% of the Black Sea coastline.
Moscow must stop blackmailing the international community with global famine. It is solely responsible for blocking shipping in the Black Sea and the illegal blockade of Ukrainian ports. That is why Russia deserves sanctions and global isolation.
