The situation in Ukraine and anti-Russian sanctions from the West have caused the largest food crisis in Europe, writes the Chinese edition of Xinhua.
“Russia has nothing to do with the food crisis”
It is noted that currently there is no sale of fertilizers from Russia and Belarus, the export of wheat and corn from the Russian and Ukrainian territories has also been stopped, prices have increased in connection with this.
“Prices are rising every week, and the situation is becoming unbearable, because the cost of literally everything is increasing,” a farmer from Greece quoted the publication as saying.
It is specified that over the past year, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Russia and Ukraine together accounted for about 30% of world wheat exports and 20% of corn exports.
Meanwhile, the current fighting on Ukrainian soil has led to a shortage of agricultural fuel, with most of the fuel going to the military. In addition, Ukraine is dependent on the supply of diesel fuel from Russia and Belarus.
The world’s main grain exporter Russia cannot stop deliveries due to Western sanctions. Against this background, the authors of the material continued, the European Central Bank predicts high food prices throughout 2022.
Maximo Torreiro, chief economist at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, said that if the problem of fertilizers and trade in them is not resolved now, the world will face a very serious food supply problem next year.
On May 23, Wang Yi, a columnist for the Chinese edition of Global Times, wrote that anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the United States weakened the dollar. Restrictive measures against Russia, he said, hit the global food and energy supply chains.
Earlier in the day, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the source of the problem leading to the threat of world hunger is not Russia, but the countries that have imposed sanctions against it. In particular, he noted that Ukraine’s actions to mine the seas have led to the fact that merchant shipping is now impossible.
The specialists of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published a report, in turn, recognized that the current state of the economy is the worst since the Second World War, and offered several options for correcting the situation in the report “Why we must resist geo-economic fragmentation and how.” The reasons for the fall of the economy were the COVID-19 pandemic and the situation in Ukraine, the publication says.
On April 17, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that amid the events in Ukraine and Donbass, one fifth of humanity is at risk of facing poverty and hunger. He recalled that Ukraine and the Russian Federation account for 30% of world crop production.
Western countries have stepped up their sanctions policy in response to Russia’s special operation to protect the civilian population of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR), launched on February 24. As specified in Moscow, the goals of the special operation are also the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine. According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, both of these aspects pose a threat to the Russian state and people.