The world can stave off Putin’s food fight

Russian forces have bombed grain silos and farms and plundered Ukrainian wheat, which US diplomats say Moscow is now trying to sell on. Ukraine’s Black Sea ports are blocked by mines to protect the shoreline from attack by Russia’s navy, which is also bottling up shipments. And yet, if President Vladimir Putin is to be believed, Western selfishness and sanctions are to blame for the current food crisis that is driving up prices — not Russia’s invasion of one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat, maize and sunflower oil.
Putin is attempting to blackmail the West into lifting punitive measures, and that’s to be expected. But more worrying is the Kremlin’s amplification of the lie that rich nations are meddling and punishing with no concern for the poorest. In the emerging world, populations are already skeptical of Western motives, not to mention highly sensitive to rising food costs, and its governments fear that the combination of pandemic scars and expensive shopping baskets will lead to protests. “The conflict is in Europe, but the implications and damage are global,” Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told a security gathering in Singapore, in a speech that underlined the risks ahead with pointed reference to Sri Lanka’s unrest and Pakistan’s soaring inflation.
Spotting an opportunity to divide, the Kremlin is stoking these concerns and spreading distrust at a time when Ukraine is in desperate need of practical support, and a wider coalition is essential to isolate Russia economically. More assertive food diplomacy is overdue.
Wealthy nations sanctioning Russia must make clear they recognize that the concern over global hunger is not unfounded — freedom is not free — and confront the question of costs, along with the reason for bearing them in terms that will resonate. Russia is fighting a war of conquest against a country it sees as a colony, something familiar to many in the emerging world. As President Volodymyr Zelenskiy put it to that same Singapore audience, quoting Singaporean leader Lee Kuan Yew, “if the big fish ate the small fish and the small fish ate shrimps” many would be vulnerable.
But wealthy nations can also defuse some of the panic: The issue here is not shortage, but access and price. They must support Ukraine in its urgent efforts to get grain and other piled-up products out of the country, whether through land or sea, while also preparing to provide support for farmers and buyers if that becomes too costly to be practicable. The international community must simultaneously keep trade and other barriers down for food products and inputs, making sure (in particular for fertiliser) that over-compliance with sanctions does not make a bad situation worse.
The problem, of course, is that this war is between two countries which are among the world’s largest food exporters — and Russia and Ukraine supply in particular the world’s poorer nations, who depend on that wheat for much of their calorie intake. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the two countries accounted for nearly a third of the world’s wheat exports last year. Eritrea bought all its wheat from Russia and Ukraine in 2021, while Egypt, the world’s largest importer of wheat, sourced most of its needs there.

—Bloomberg