Looming hunger crisis overshadows EU summit

The world’s most vulnerable countries are facing food shortages and starvation due to the destruction and disruption of food supplies caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the European Union has warned.

The prospect of a severe food crisis developing this year loomed over the summit of the 27 national leaders, who set down plans to try to develop land routes out for grain and jointly called on Russia to lift a blockade of Ukrainian seaports.

Ukraine is a big global food supplier, but its usual monthly exports of grain have dropped from five million tonnes to between 200,000 and one million tonnes, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said.

“Russia is not only blocking the export of Ukrainian wheat, it is bombarding warehouses where wheat is stored, deliberately,” she told reporters. “They are also mining the fields where Ukraine could have the next harvest of corn.”

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“The fact that there is a severe food crisis developing is only the fault of Russia’s unjustified war. Without this war we would not have it. And we should always over and over repeat that.”

It was a response to statements from Moscow blaming western sanctions for the food shortage, a claim amplified by Russian-owned information channels targeting developing countries that are vulnerable to hunger.

Attempts are ongoing to negotiate a sea route out for an estimated 22 million tonnes of grain that are currently prevented from leaving the port city of Odesa.

But the Kremlin has said that sanctions should be dropped as the price of ending the blockade, and with agreement elusive the 27 EU leaders agreed to further develop transport links to allow Ukraine to export food over land.

Macky Sall, chairman of the African Union and president of Senegal, addressed the leaders over video link and warned that African countries were strongly dependent on Ukrainian and Russian grain, and that tens of millions of people were already at risk of hunger and malnourishment.

“The situation is worrying,” he told the leaders according to a released copy of his remarks. “The worst may be ahead of us if the current trend continues.”

Mr Sall said the EU’s decision to ban a series of Russian banks from the international Swift payment system was exacerbating the problem.

“It means that even if the products exist, payment becomes complicated, if not impossible,” he said, urging the leaders to do everything possible to avoid “a catastrophic scenario of shortages and generalised high prices”.

He noted that the cost of fertiliser had tripled since last year amid the disruption, a development that has raised concerns that production of food could fall in other growing regions around the world in the coming year.

In an address to the EU leaders on Monday night, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the regime of Russian president Vladmir Putin was causing a food crisis deliberately in an attempt to cause a new wave of migration to Europe, something that has caused acrimony and division within the EU in the past.

“Large-scale famine in Africa and Asia will mean a threat of a new large-scale migrant crisis for southern and southeastern Europe,” Mr Zelenskiy said according to a copy of his remarks published by his office.

“When you hear food blackmail from Moscow, please know that this is their deliberate strike at your societies. To ensure this strike, Russia simply uses the people of Africa and Asia as hostages, deliberately pushing them to starvation. So that people from there flee to you en masse.”