The UN secretary general António Guterres has warned that the price of desperately needed grain on world markets has already begun to rise as a result of Russia’s decision to terminate the deal safeguarding Black Sea grain exports.
The UN and Turkey brokered the agreement a year ago to safeguard passage of Ukrainian grain exports through the Black Sea in the wake of Russia’s invasion. A joint co-ordination centre was established to inspect ships and monitor their movements.
In peacetime, Ukraine, one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat and sunflower oil, produced enough food exports to feed 400 million people. It shipped some 5 million metric tons of grains and oilseed a month through its Black Sea ports, and the impact of Russia’s blockade was immediate: net importers, such as Egypt and Libya, were cut off from up to two-thirds of their supply of cereals while global food prices soared.
Russia has pulled out of the deal alleging its own agricultural exports are still being obstructed by western sanctions, contravening a second deal under which the UN committed to facilitating these for a three-year period. Russia has now warned that it can no longer guarantee the safety of shipping in the northwestern Black Sea .
Guterres insists that he had secured two US waivers that exempt Russia from food export sanctions, a British waiver on insurance on Russian shipping, and an EU exemption for fertilisers. Ukraine’s plan B, involving a €500 million guarantee fund for ships using the Black Sea, and a diversion of grain through the Danube river, is unlikely to come close to compensating for the loss of a route that is now seeing a monthly 4.2 million metric tons pass through it, over 80 per cent of pre-war exports.
A resumption of Russia’s threat to shipping – it started yesterday with a wave of drone and cruise attacks on the port of Odessa – strikes directly at a vital civilian target crucial to feeding some of the world’s poorest nations. It is nothing short of a war crime.