Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to have declared open season on Ukraine’s consequential grain exports. Putin says he wants payback for damage to a nearly 12-mile bridge that connects annexed Crimea to the Russian mainland. The attacks on Odesa, meanwhile, targeted the city’s port, a key piece of infrastructure where Russia had allowed grain to be exported as part of the deal brokered last July by the U.N. and Turkey. Russia, by the way, was already smarting over Turkey’s decision to allow Sweden to enter NATO, apparently alongside promises by the US to let Turkey buy F-16 fighter jets. “The idea that Putin would play roulette with the hungriest people in the world at the time of the greatest food crisis in our lifetimes is just deeply disturbing,” U.S. aid chief Samantha Power told CNN’s senior national security correspondent Alex Marquardt on Wednesday. “If you are a bully and an aggressor, it is always easier to lob missiles and send drones at civilian infrastructure,” Power said. “I think we absolutely should expect the worst from the Russian Federation as it continues to struggle on the battlefield,” she added. “It is going to require pressure not only from the United States and the United Nations, but from those countries in sub-Saharan Africa who will suffer most from the higher grain and oil prices,” she said. A breakdown of the grain deal would turn a “crisis of affordability” into a crisis of availability, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in November. Last year, economic shocks that included the impacts of the Ukraine war and the pandemic were the main reasons for “acute food insecurity” in 27 countries, according to a report by the Food Security Information Network, a data-sharing platform funded by the United Kingdom, France and Germany. The report defines acute food insecurity as the extent that it puts the person’s life at risk. The United Nations said that in November that the deal’s collapse would “hit those farmers to the brink of the most.” The warning came after Moscow suspended its participation in the pact for several days following drone attacks in Sevastopol, a port city in Russian-controlled Crimea, following days of attacks on the city in the past few weeks. The attack on the port city of OdesA came just as hope faded for Russia to rejoin the Grain deal. Wheat and corn prices on global commodities markets jumped Monday after Russia pulled out of the Grain Initiative, and they spiked again Wednesday after attacks in the ports in Odes a. Watch his report on the attacks and their effect on the worldwide food supply on CNN’s “What Matters” on Thursday at 8 p.m. ET. A version of this story appears in ‘s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here. For confidential support, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or go to www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org.
How Putin just spiked worldwide wheat prices. The Russian president has been accused of trying to boost his country’s currency. He has also been linked to a spike in U.S. interest rates.
