Russian President Vladamir Putin has blamed the West for emerging global food and energy crises and repeated his government’s offers of safe passage for ships exporting grain from Ukraine, one of the world’s leading exporters of wheat and corn.
Putin was speaking after a meeting with the chairman of the African Union, Senegal’s President Macy Sall, who told the Russian president the fighting in Ukraine and Western sanctions had worsened global food shortages.
African countries are especially hard hit by the food shortages and price increases. They imported 44 per cent of their wheat from Russia and Ukraine between 2018 and 2020, according to UN figures, and wheat prices have soared around 45 per cent as a result of the supply disruption, according to the African Development Bank.
“We will facilitate the peaceful passage and guarantee the safety of arrivals to these ports, as well as the entry of foreign ships and their movement through the Azov and Black seas, in any direction,” Putin pledged, in remarks carried on Russian state TV after his meeting with Sall in the Black Sea city of Sochi.
Ukraine and its allies have said that Russia is to blame for blocking its grain exports, because of threats to shipping from Russian naval vessels. Ukraine also fears that opening up safe corridors to Ukrainian ports could make them vulnerable to Russian attack.
“Russia has played hunger games recently to put the blame on Ukraine and others for blocking Ukrainian food exports,” Yevheniia Filipenko, Ukraine’s envoy to the UN office in Geneva, said on Friday.
While food and fertiliser are exempt, international sanctions have targeted Russian shipping and made international shipping companies reluctant to transport Russian cargoes.
“The fact that this crisis brought the cessation of exports from Ukraine, but also from Russia because of sanctions, we have found ourselves in between these two,” Sall told reporters. “It’s of absolute necessity that they (Western partners) help to facilitate the export of Ukrainian grains, but also that Russia is able to export fertilisers, food products, but mainly cereals.”
In citing the sanctions as a contributing factor, Sall is partly supporting Putin’s explanations. The Russian president appears to be attempting to drive a wedge in international support for sanctions and emphasise that other countries are suffering more than Russia.
Putin on Friday proposed several corridors to allow foreign ships safely to leave ports along the Black and Azov seas. He said Odesa and other ports under Ukrainian control could be used for exports after mines are removed and also those now under Russian control – Berdyansk and Mariupol. He also suggested moving grain through other countries such as neighbouring Belarus.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Friday that Ukraine was ready to create the necessary conditions to resume exports from Odesa, the country’s largest port.
“The question is how to make sure that Russia doesn’t abuse the trade route to attack the city of Odesa,” Kuleba tweeted. “No guarantees from Russia so far. We seek solutions together with the UN and partners.”
The United Nations has warned that 18 million people are facing severe hunger in the Sahel, the part of Africa just below the Sahara Desert where farmers are facing their worst agricultural production in more than a decade. About 13 million more people face severe hunger in the Horn of Africa region as a result of a persistent drought.
