Ukraine has warned that the world is facing a severe food shortage unless Russia lifts its embargo on the Black Sea port, as the development of alternative routes will only allow to bring in a small portion of its grain stock.
Oleksandr Kubrakov, Ukraine’s infrastructure minister, told the Financial Times that “all our operations will not cover 20 percent of what we can do with the Black Sea ports”.
Ukraine and its western partners are looking for ways to import 20mn tons of grain abroad and open up storage for this year’s harvest. The crisis threatens tens of millions of people in the Middle East and Africa to rely on Ukrainian grain.
Trucks face long delays on the Polish-Romanian border, while transporting grain by rail is difficult because trains in the EU and Ukraine travel on different track lanes. Russia has repeatedly bombed other routes, including those leading to Romania by road or rail, when grain was loaded onto boats across the Danube into the Black Sea.
The EU has simplified its procedures and Ukraine is providing additional guarantees on European ships and trucks after many western insurers fled due to the danger.
Without those efforts, Kubrakov said it would seem insufficient. “Everyone is doing superhuman work, and [the export] is growing every month. . . in a short period of time it could rise to 30 percent [Ukraine’s export capacity in the Black Sea], ”he said.
Russia has seized much of Ukraine’s southern bread and is developing into an industrial region east of the Donbas, a hotbed of three months of war over Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Since the end of February, Russia has seized between 400,000 and 500,000 tons of grain in the seized areas. Some Ukrainian farms have been hit by air strikes and gunfire.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has blamed the food crisis on Russian sanctions imposed and said Moscow will only lift the ban if the borders are lifted. On Friday in a state television interview he said: “The problem of shipping grain to Ukraine does not exist.”
Kubrakov warned that Russia’s actions put the risk of creating a “global crisis” and that Moscow was “acting like a pirates”.
“They do not care about the lives of these people in Africa,” he said. “They say: ‘We don’t care. We are concerned only with the penalties imposed on us. Now you are captives. ‘”
Kubrakov said converting one railway line to EU level would cost $ 2bn to $ 3bn, and more investment was needed to increase capacity when crossing borders.
Maize lying in a grain depot damaged by Russian tanks in Cherkaska Lozova, Ukraine.
Kyiv has agreed to send up to 4mn tons of grain per month via Belarus, using the same railway gauges, to the port of Lithuania, according to a government document seen by FT. But the plan has no political significance because Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko allowed Russia to use his country as a platform for its invasion of Ukraine.
Although the volume of export routes is increasing, EU strategists estimate that Ukraine can only ship 5mn of grain by the end of the summer, leaving the final crop at risk of rot and making it extremely difficult to store grain this year. .
“There is no quick fix, unfortunately,” Kubrakov said. Increasing the final volume will also mean investing billions of dollars in grain stocks on new roads, he added.
Danger in Ukraine’s grain crops has evoked memories of the country’s famine in the 1930’s when it was part of the Soviet Union. Farmers were deprived of their grain and imprisoned in their villages, resulting in the death of 4mn people in an area known as Holodomor, or starvation.
Kubrakov said the consequences of the Black Sea blockade could be devastating. “Have they ever made Holodomor in our country, yes? Now they have the opportunity to do Holodomor all over the world, ”he said.
UN secretary-general António Guterres is leading an effort to unblock the Black Sea ports and secure guarantees from Russia not to attack commercial shipping.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said this week that Putin and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had agreed to help de-mine Ukrainian ports, which Kyiv has blocked to guard against a coastal assault.
But Ukraine says Russia has fired on several cargo vessels and mined the sea route blocking their safe passage through the Black Sea, making any potential agreement contingent on third-party guarantees for the ships’ safety.
Kubrakov said the negotiations were Russia’s “last chance to avoid essentially being guilty for the deaths of millions of people on several continents”.