Russia ‘holding humanity hostage’ over Black Sea grain deal, UN hears

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Russia has been accused at the UN security council of stoking famine by blocking grain exports through the Black Sea, with the aim of profiting from higher global food prices.

Russia’s representative said on Friday that Moscow might consider restarting the scheme if it was given better terms for its own food and fertiliser exports, but was accused by western diplomats of holding the world’s poor to ransom.

The UN head of humanitarian relief, Martin Griffiths, said that the Black Sea grain initiative, which Russia ended on Monday, had been a success, allowing the export of 33m metric tonnes of grain from Ukrainian ports to 45 countries on more than a thousand ships, over the course of a year.

The agreement had brought down average grain prices by 23%, Griffiths said, but he added they are now rapidly rebounding. On Wednesday wheat prices experienced their biggest increase since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022. Griffiths said the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people, dependent on food relief, would pay the price.

“For many of those 362 million people, it’s not a matter of sadness or disappointment, it’s a matter of a threat to their future and the future of their children and their families,” Griffiths said. “Some will go hungry, some will starve. Many may die as a result of these decisions.”

A succession of western ambassadors at the council session noted that Russian food exports, meanwhile, were rapidly increasing, and that the higher prices caused by the collapse of the Black Sea agreement worked to Russia’s economic gain.

“Russian exporters are already benefiting while millions who cannot afford higher priced grain suffer, especially people in the Middle East and Africa,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador, said.

“They’re exporting more grains than ever before and at higher prices. Russia is simply using the Black Sea as blackmail. It’s playing political games and holding humanity hostage.”

Nicolas de Rivi?re, the French ambassador, said Moscow was “increasing its income to finance its war of aggression against Ukraine” by stopping the Black Sea deal.

Russia’s deputy representative, Dmitry Polyanskiy, said only a small percentage of Ukrainian grain exports had gone to the poorest countries, and that the scheme had become “clearly commercial in nature”. Although there was a parallel deal to facilitate Russian exports of grain and fertiliser, Polyanskiy argued that Russian farmers were making losses because of higher costs caused by western sanctions, and damage to an ammonia pipeline between Russia and Ukrainian Black Sea ports, which has been closed since Moscow’s launched the full invasion.

“You want us to tolerate this, distinguished colleagues?” he asked. “Given the facts that I have raised, nobody should have been surprised at the decision we took to suspend the Black Sea initiative.”

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Polyanskiy said: “We stand ready to consider the possibility of rejoining but only under one condition” – the lifting of financial and economic sanctions that have an impact on Russian grain and fertiliser exports.

Western diplomats rejected what they portrayed as a bid to leverage potential famine for national gain.

“Russia’s latest demands are tantamount to holding the world’s starving to hostage,” the British ambassador, Barbara Woodward, said. “Food is not a weapon.”