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Calls grow for Russia to free up Ukrainian ports for grain exports
By Claire Parker
May 14, 2022 at 3:46 p.m. EDT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/14/ukraine-ports-grain-global-hunger/

Russia stepped up missile attacks on Odessa this week, raising fresh concerns about the security of the port. A port in Odessa is seen in March. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven nations appealed to Russia to free up sea export routes for Ukrainian grain and agricultural products critical to feeding the world, as food prices rise and the World Food Program warns of “catastrophic” consequences if Ukrainian ports remain blocked.
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“We must not be naive. Russia has now expanded the war against Ukraine to many states as a war of grain,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said at a news conference Saturday after the G-7 meetings. “It is not collateral damage, it is an instrument in a hybrid war that is intended to weaken cohesion against Russia’s war.”

Baerbock, who hosted the three-day gathering of top diplomats in Weissenhaus, Germany, said the group was searching for alternative routes to transport grain out of Ukraine as the threat of a global hunger crisis mounts.
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Up to 50 million people will face hunger in the coming months unless Ukrainian grain is released, Baerbock said, according to the Associated Press. About 28 million tons of grain are stuck in Ukrainian ports blockaded by Russian forces.

As the conflict in Ukraine grinds on, some countries have looked to India as an alternative grain source. But after making moves to expand its agricultural export industry, India on Friday banned wheat exports, citing its own food security concerns.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, it has all but captured the port city of Mariupol, where Russian forces have surrounded the last remaining Ukrainian fighters holed up in the Azovstal steel plant.

Russia has also taken control of the Kherson region on the Black Sea and fired missiles at the major port city of Odessa, which remains under Ukrainian control. Ukraine closed its ports in late February amid the fighting, and Russian warships and floating mines have prevented them from reopening.

Ukraine’s wheat harvest, which feeds the world, can’t leave the country

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday that such a halt to port operations had likely not been seen in Ukraine since World War II. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Friday that Ukraine was willing to take part in talks with Russia to unblock grain supplies but that his government had received “no positive feedback” from officials in Moscow, the AP reported.
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David Beasley, head of the United Nations World Food Program, spoke with U.S. lawmakers and Biden administration officials in Washington this week to emphasize the urgency of reopening the ports and addressing the global food crisis.

Ukraine grows enough food to feed 400 million people annually, and 30 percent of the world’s supply of wheat comes from Russia and Ukraine, according to the World Food Program.

“The ports are critical to food security globally,” Beasley told The Washington Post. “It will be catastrophic if we don’t have those ports opened up and moving food supplies around the world.”

On an average working day, some 3,000 train carloads of grain arrive at Ukrainian ports, where they are stored in silos and, in peacetime, shipped across the Black Sea and through the Bosporus and then around the world, Beasley said. With exports blocked, the silos are full — meaning there is no place to store grain from the next harvest, due to take place in July and August.

The impact of the blockage will be felt in both rich and poor countries, Beasley said, and it is already affecting market volatility. The war has driven prices of wheat, cooking oil and other commodities to record highs, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projected global wheat supplies would fall next crop year.
Flatbread at a bakery in Cairo. Egypt gets between 75 and 85 percent of its wheat supply from Ukraine and Russia, according to U.N. statistics. (Nariman El-Mofty/AP)

Countries in the Middle East and Africa are especially reliant on Ukrainian grain. Egypt gets between 75 and 85 percent of its wheat supply from Ukraine and Russia, according to U.N. statistics. More than 60 percent of wheat imported by Lebanon comes from Ukraine. Somalia and Benin depend on Russia and Ukraine for all of their imported wheat.